Everything and then Some
by Insane. Certifiably
Summary: The beanstalk was the first of their adventures, but by no means the greatest; and somewhere between the worlds and portals and magic, swords and soldiers and thievery after the portal took them down, they became partners in every sense of the word. Captain Swan.
1. Going home

**I have officially climbed onboard this ship and this is my effort toward sailing it. I do not own OUAT, otherwise Captain Swan would be canon by now.  
**

**Starts from 2x09 and diverges from there.**

* * *

"The compass, get it!" Snow ordered, already loading another arrow into her bow. Emma nodded, tightening her grip around the sword she'd acquired, and dashed around the edge of the portal, ducking the fireball Cora carelessly lobbed at her head. She raised her sword and swung it at Hook, who caught it with his own. She swung again and when he blocked the blow, Emma reared back and kicked him in the chest.

The pirate staggered backward, but when she slashed at him overhand, he did a fancy twirling thing and her sword went flying into the sand. Emma lunged at him and he used her own momentum against her to slam her to the ground.

Hook planted his sword in the ground and grabbed at her ankle as she attempted to crawl toward the dropped weapon. She scrabbled, then rolled, once, twice and suddenly the ground was disappearing from under her.

She felt Hook brace against her weight, but his boots slipped in sand slick from the portal's spray and they tumbled together into the portal. The whirl of magic, thicker than water, caught them up and they were swept in one wide circle before greedy tendrils grabbed at her and snatched her down.

Emma's world went black, and she didn't even have time to cry out.

* * *

Cora turned at the scream, choked off halfway-through, that issued from the portal, and Mulan took the opening and stabbed her ruthlessly. The witch went down with the blade where her heart should be, pinned to the ground by the sword.

She snarled and raised a hand that refused to glow. "What?" she managed out.

"The sword blocks your magic," Mulan told her. The warrior reached down and ripped off the small leather satchel hanging from Cora's hip, cradling it as though it was the most precious thing she had ever come across.

"Aurora needs her heart," Snow said. The queen had yet to turn away from the swirling portal, even as Cora struggled fruitlessly behind them and cursed their families for generations, from their ancestors to their descendants a hundred years from now.

Mulan stretched out a hand, hesitating a beat before letting it rest on the queen's shoulder. "Emma is as strong a warrior as any I have fought beside," she told Snow, "if there is anyone who can survive whatever the portal has done to them, it is your daughter."

The other woman nodded and turned to her. "Go, give Aurora her heart."

Mulan nodded and hurried off and Snow turned to the fallen queen. "Where is she?" she snarled.

Cora managed a laugh despite the fact she was fighting the metal through her chest. "I have no idea," she confided, "but it isn't your precious Storybrooke."

Snow leaned on the sword vindictively and stalked away to stare down at the portal, finding the compass and turning it over and over in her hands. Behind her, Cora tried her best to persuade the queen, but Snow simply ignored her, drowning in the detached feeling that she had only felt once before, when she walked into the nursery and found Charming bleeding out on the floor.

After what felt like ages, Mulan and Aurora reappeared through the bushes, the latter with her cloak wrapped tightly around herself as though she was cold. The warrior crouched next to Cora and examined the blade through her chest while Aurora joined her at the portal's edge.

"I'd like to come to Storybrooke with you," Aurora ventured after a long moment.

Snow shot her a startled glance. "What about Phillip?" The girl their world had named Sleeping Beauty had been determined there was a way to bring her prince back and she was going to find it.

The brunette tugged her cloak tighter about herself and cast a nervous glance at Cora, who was having rocks piled on top of her by Mulan. "I learned more than Cora wanted me to when she had my heart," she confided, "there is no way to retrieve a soul consumed by a wraith, any more than there is a way to lie in the presence of a gryphon."

Snow pulled the other woman close, offering what comfort she could. Aurora buried her head in Snow's shoulder and they stayed that way until Mulan ran up to them, sword back in its sheath at her hip and Cora fighting to get out from under the rocks. "Let's go," the warrior said.

Wordlessly, Snow extended the hand with the compass. Aurora laid a hand on it and Mulan wrapped an arm around the princess's shoulders before grasping onto the gleaming metal. All together, they leapt into the portal.

They fell for what might have been seconds and might have been hours, dragged along by the compass. All around them was darkness, the light from the Enchanted Forest fading rapidly until a spark of light shot up in front of them. As quickly as the darkness had descended, it was gone, and the portal spat them out over the edge of the wishing well.

"Grandma!" Henry's hug nearly took her off her feet just as Snow was getting them under her. She clutched him tight, trying to postpone the inevitable moment when he discovered Emma was gone and glanced around. Regina was doubled over, leaning against a tree as though that was the only thing keeping her upright, and Rumplestiltskin was slinking away as sneakliy could. Snow made a mental note to ask Henry what the Dark One had done later.

"Henry?" Aurora's voice served as a distraction, and her grandson was all too happy to hug Aurora too.

"Snow!" Red's greeting was nearly as enthusiastic as Henry's, though she noticed her old friend was limping just slightly as the wolf-girl embraced her.

"Where's Charming?" she asked frantically.

"Gold's shop," Red replied. When Snow hesitated, her friend gave her a small shove. "Go, I'll deal with your visitors."

She needed no more encouragement. The town passed in a blur and the dwarves made way for her. For just an instant lingering over him she hesitated, the memory of the fire-room sweeping her up, then she fought it back, set a hand on either side of his face and swooped down to kiss her love.

Magic, dizzying and heady, filled her from head to toe, making her feel lighter than air and brighter than the sun. It was a glorious feeling, made better only when she pulled back and Charming opened his eyes.

"You found me," he said, repeating her words to him from that glass coffin.

Snow couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up, running her thumb over the scar on his chin. "Did you doubt I would?" she teased, echoing his line.

"No," he answered, and sat up to kiss her properly. This, being in his arms at last, both of them alive and whole and _finally_ together, was better than any curse-breaking magic could possibly be.

"Though the room of fire gave me pause," he finished when they broke for air.

Snow laughed again and cuddled close, noting in a corner of her vision that Henry had entered the room, the dwarves pressing aside to make room for the last member of their family. He climbed straight up next to them; Snow slipped sideways to sit on the bed rather than in her husband's lap, freeing one of Charming's arms to wrap around his grandson.

"My mom didn't make it, did she?" he asked in a wavering voice.

Snow felt suddenly horrible. She should have told Henry the whole story before going to wake her prince, but she had been desperate to see him, save him from that horrible burning room, assure herself he was still alive and whole.

"Oh, Henry," she reached across to take one of the boy's hands, "she's not dead. Emma fell into the portal."

He looked up at her, warm brown eyes swimming with unshed tears. "She's gone?"

"Hey," Charming shook his grandson lightly, "we're family. We'll find her, don't worry."

* * *

Emma opened her eyes to blackness more complete than anything she had ever seen.

"Oh good, I was beginning to fear you'd never wake lass."


	2. Someplace that isn't Storybrooke

**Wow. I am just blown away by the response this story has gotten. Thanks to you guys, the plot bunnies are contently getting fat, hence this chapter coming out earlier than planned.  
**

**Still don't own OUAT. The chapter title comes from Cora's little speech as she and Hook are about to jump into the portal.  
**

* * *

Emma opened her eyes to darkness utterly complete. There was not a hint of light anywhere in the void around her, not the slightest shimmer of a star or the faintest glimmer of a lightbulb.

"Oh good," Hook greeted. She jackknifed up to find the pirate standing a handful of feet away, somehow visible despite the lack of light in the utter blackness around him. "I was beginning to fear you'd never wake lass." He was leaning as though a wall propped him up, though the darkness there was no different than anywhere else.

"Where are we?" the blonde demanded.

He shrugged. "Not exactly sure. You're the one who pulled us into the portal."

The accusation was true, and there was nothing she could do about it. Emma pushed herself to her feet, brushing off her jeans and casting around her surroundings for anything that might tell her where they were. "How do we get out of here?" she asked, coming full circle to fix her attention on the pirate again.

He looked back down to where he was sharpening his hook. "We don't." The words were sharp. "You need something to navigate this place," he waved his hand at the darkness, "that compass, the famed Hatter, or a magic bean."

Emma violently shoved down the emotions that threatened to surge to the surface. She _would_ get home and see Henry again, and if he didn't want to be helpful, Hook could just stay there and rot for all she cared. She wheeled around, started walking away from him.

A half-dozen steps later, she turned around and found Hook hadn't moved an inch. He was the exact same distance away, still leaning against a wall that wasn't there, sharpening his hook. "Nice try darling," he told, "if it was that easy to get out, don't you think everyone would?"

She took a step toward him, using the pirate as a measure of how far she had traveled. Again, she had the sensation of pressing against a flat surface, of moving forward, but the distance didn't change. She persisted for awhile, trying everything she could think of, but was finally forced to give up. Emma hopped up to sit on what felt more like a kitchen counter than anything else and traced idle patterns on it, thinking.

She didn't cope well with inactivity, she never had. She needed something to focus on to prevent herself form dwelling on the fact that her chances of getting back to Henry were now slim to none.

"I'll make you a... trade," she began, skirting around the word 'deal', remembering Gold's penchant for such things. Hook darted his eyes up to show he was paying attention, but didn't say anything.

"Tell me why you want revenge on Go- Rumplestiltskin so badly," she proposed.

"And what will you give me?" Hook asked, half-turning toward her and looking up properly.

"I'll tell you about..." she cast about for some story he would not have heard. Obviously she couldn't tell him any fairytales, though it would be entertaining to see his reaction to Peter Pan, which left her with her own experiences, "some of my time as a bail bondswoman."

"I've no clue what such a thing is, but that would get you only the tale of the day Smee tried to kiss a mermaid," the pirate replied, "Not Milah."

"What would be a fair trade?" Emma asked.

"Tell me about your love," was his prompt reply. Infuriating pirate had probably been thinking about this ever since she'd let slip the fact she had once been in love. "The one who hurt you so badly."

The blonde sucked in a deep breath, biting back the immediate refusal. If they truly were stuck here, he wouldn't be able to tell anyone, and if they weren't, she would have Milah to use as leverage. "Done," she agreed, forcefully stamping on the part of her that said this was how things had started with Neal. With trust.

His answering smile was grimly pleased, and Hook pushed off his 'wall' to stand straight. For a moment, his gaze was distant, than he began to speak. He told of a little town, whose only real draw was a decent harbor and place to restock, and the lonely and miserable woman he had met in a tavern there. She had wanted to escape her life for one night, drank in all his stories of life at sea like most drew breath, ravenous for the adventure. She would have been content to stay all night, but Rumplestiltskin showed up to try and persuade her back to their home.

"Why didn't he use just magic?" Emma interrupted.

"This was before he became the Dark One," Killian explained. He was changing before her eyes, the centuries-old revenge-driven pirate retreating into a younger, perhaps more foolishly hopeful version of the man she knew, and Emma felt a pang of something dangerously close to understanding.

"He had brought her son, Baelfire, with him, and it was because of the boy that Milah went home, but she was with us when we set sail again the next morning."

"You took Rumplestiltskin's wife?" she clarified.

Killian's gaze darkened into Hook's. "'Took' implies capture. I did not knock her on the head and throw her over my shoulder. She showed up on _my ship _and begged to come with. I allowed her to accompany me, even gave the coward a chance to fight for her."

Emma looked at him, unimpressed. "I'm guessing he didn't take you up on that."

"Didn't even pick up the sword," Killian scoffed, "at least you _tried_ to fight me."

"I wasn't that bad!" the blonde protested. She got a disbelieving look as answer and settled back to tracing patterns on her seat. "What happened to her?"

The man who'd been telling her stories of his love began shrinking back into Hook. "Rumplestiltskin happened," he growled, and proceeded to tell her how they had met again, how his Crocodile had gained magic but remained a coward and how Milah had shown up at their duel to save him. "She offered him a trade: the bean for our lives. He was to come to the _Rodger_, he'd get the bean and we'd never see him again."

"But something went wrong," Emma guessed.

He was somewhere between Hook and Killian as he nodded. "He asked her how she could just leave and lashed me to the mast. She told him she had never loved him and so he ripped her heart out and crushed it to dust. She died in my arms, just went limp and hit the floor. There was nothing I could do. So you see why I have to kill the Crocodile?"

She stayed silent a long moment, before the words just started rushing out, eyes locked on her fingers tracing patterns on the darkness.

"The sheriff before me -Graham- was convinced he didn't have a heart and Henry insisted the Evil Queen had it. He- he died in my arms right after telling Regina he was done with her, just went limp and hit the floor," she copied his phrasing on purpose, a humorless laugh bubbling up between her lips as she lost herself in the memories again, "Right before he died, he told me he remembered. For a while afterward, I almost wanted to believe he'd remembered the curse, that Henry was right, if only so I could have someone to hurt the way I'd been hurt."

"I'm sorry," Killian said. She had heard those words so many times in the days surrounding the funeral, before it became almost taboo to even acknowledge Graham had existed, that she had once sworn she was going to punch the next person who offered her condolences but it was different now. Because of him. Because he had had someone die the same way. "He was your love?" the pirate sounded honestly curious, but Emma still couldn't bring herself to look up. She was going to drown in these memories as she relived them and she was not going to let him see her weak.

"No, Graham was not my love," she answered shortly. "His name was Neal." She told the pirate, or more accurately, she told the blackness she was sitting on since she still couldn't look at him, how they'd met. How she was sixteen and naive, stealing a stolen car and almost getting caught by the police, only for Neal to save her. She told him how they would pose as couple sometimes and then that turned into really being one.

She told him about Tallahassee, about the wanted poster and the watches. Her voice caught when she got to the part where Neal had given her final instructions and put one of the timepieces on her.

"He put it on my wrist, said it would keep me from being late, kissed me goodbye, and that was the last time I ever saw him," she concluded.

"He just ran off?" Hook's voice was too-casual, carefully restrained.

Emma snorted. "Worse, he tipped off the cops, framed me for the whole thing. I wound up in jail for almost a year, found out I was pregnant and had to give up my kid because of that."

"Love," his tone was one she hadn't heard him use before, gentle, almost caring, "Look at me." She kept her eyes stubbornly down, knowing he couldn't make her with neither of them able to move from their spots.

"Emma," Hook insisted, and something in his voice made her cave and finally look up. "He didn't deserve you."

"This coming from a pirate?" she asked disbelievingly.

Hook didn't flinch. "This coming from a gentleman. I may be a pirate, but I would not abandon someone I claimed to love, much less betray them like that."

If he kept saying things like that, she might be inclined to actually believe him. Something shifted inside her, tugging fiercely, and she jumped when Hook's fingers slid over hers, stilling the movements she'd been making. Somehow, he had managed to close the distance, or maybe she had, but he was inches away from her, looking at her with those too-blue eyes.

With the way she had shaped the blackness, how she was sitting, it would have been easy for him to step between her legs and tug her flush to him, turn this into something else entirely. The scariest part was Emma honestly wasn't sure if she would have stopped him if he had.

Instead he took her hand and tugged until she slid to her feet, then wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin. He went no further than that, just held her close.

Emma stiffened for a moment, panicking, then let her head fall onto his chest and her arms wrap around him in return. Had they been anywhere else, she would have shoved him away, but right now there was no one to see and judge, no one else who would ever know. She could chalk this up to a lack of human contact, a fear that she would never see anyone else ever again, but she wasn't thinking about anything except that being in his arms felt just as frighteningly _right_ as it had on top of the beanstalk when she had grabbed him to stop the trip wire.

So she allowed him to just hold her, alone in the middle of a nothingness they may never escape from.

And that just wouldn't do.

Somehow, they had moved in relation to each other. Emma shut her eyes and _willed_ them somewhere, anywhere else, as long as it wasn't here where her walls were entirely useless and it was far too easy to open up and share things she hadn't even told her best friend.

At least, back before she figured out said best friend was also her mom. She'd always wished for a family, and then when she found it it was possibly the most complicated set of relationships in the whole of any realm.

The same sensation as before, that twinge like a string being pulled, resounded through her. Emma wasn't even aware of the change until Killian's arms loosened around her and she opened her eyes to see what was wrong and was nearly blinded.

After the perfect blackness, the light, cast over rolling red plains dotted with specks of rocks and ruins as far as the eye could see, was nearly blinding. Hook took a step back, releasing her, and turned to see more of this landscape. "You are bloody brilliant love," he complimented, turning to look back at her over his shoulder. The smile dropped off his face as he took her in.

"You're glowing."

The remains of a wall blew up beside her, sending up a shower of stone fragments, and a cry screeched over the plains.

* * *

**Mwah ha ha. Yes, I am just that cruel. You'll like the next chapter though, fellow shipmates, and you'll never guess who they're about to meet. (hint: families are messy) Brownie points for anybody who figures out the hint! Until then!**

***runs away to hide- err, to write next chapter***


	3. Hell and high water

******Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody! Enjoy the chapter and the new episode of Once!  
**

******I don't own anything you recognize.**

* * *

Hook ducked sideways, taking momentary shelter behind a wall. "If you wanted to kill me so badly love, you should have done so when we both had swords!"

Emma didn't reply, couldn't. There was magic inside her that she had never known about, and it was making its presence thoroughly known now, bubbling and hissing and spitting like the volcano Mary Margaret's class had made, trying to escape.

It was succeeding.

Desperately, she tried to plug it up, push it back down to wherever it had been hiding before now, casting a frantic glance at the shapes loping rapidly toward them across the horizon. Another cry, something between a screech and a howl, echoed toward them as the magic fought through what small effort she had made, blowing a crater in the ground in an explosion of light.

Fingers latched onto her wrist while the dust was still settling and Hook yanked her after him into the remains of what must have once been a town. She didn't miss the way he flinched and cursed when he took hold of her skin and guessed the magic was making things less than comfortable for him as well.

She pulled her wrist out of his hold in time for another explosion of the magic to force its way out of her, leaving her doubled over trying to catch her breath and Hook coughing violently.

"Bloody hell lass," he choked, "are you trying to kill us?"

She was.

She was going get him killed.

Bad things happened to everyone who got close to her, if they stuck around long enough for that. Even when they weren't trying to get close, just being in her company seemed enough.

She straightened up and turned her back on him. Two steps later, steel looped around her wrist and she was whirled around. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I thought I was going to kill you?" she shot back, fighting the urge to double over again as the magic licked up her insides and boiled out, causing another explosion like a firecracker, "Why don't you save yourself the trouble and just let me go?"

"Not bloody likely," Hook snarled, "right now, whether I like it or not, you are my best chance at getting to Storybrooke and my revenge."

The calls were coming closer, becoming distinct and splitting off. Soon they would be surrounded, and she was only sending up flares. Emma tried again to wad the magic up and shove it back down into whatever little hidey-hole it had been in before. Hook yanked them sideways into an alley that provided some modicum of cover as the magic unfurled from her containment attempt in a hiss and shower of sparks.

"They're going to find us if you keep that up, love," he murmured in her ear, and Emma couldn't fight back the shiver that went through her.

"I can't," she whispered back, "I can't make it stop."

It was true. The magic was a bubbling mess inside her, and whenever she tried to shut it down, batten down the hatches, cover it up, whatever, it slipped through her fingers and poured out faster, twenty-eight years worth of suppressed magic leaking out all at once.

The cool metal of the hook made her startle as the pirate slid it under her chin. "You can't out-think it, darling," he admonished, "It's an instinctive thing. Stop thinking."

"And how do I do that?" Emma demanded, wishing desperately she could see whether the creatures were getting close.

Without further preamble, Hook kissed her.

A different sort of magic flooded her, drowning out the stuff trying to claw its way out. If the previous magic had been a volcano, this was a hurricane, an unrestrained storm that ignored all her walls and set off showers of sparks everywhere he touched her. For a moment, she floundered, trying to keep track of both, but then he tugged her tighter to him and wound his fingers in her hair and Emma gave in, looped her arms around his neck, and kissed him back.

"See?" Killian asked when they broke apart, and she was gratified to hear his breathing was as uneven as hers. "You just have to stop thinking."

The magic flared contently when he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, leaving a trail of tingling sparks in the wake of his touch. She would never admit it aloud, but he was right. When she stopped fighting it, trying to make it fit into her view of the world and simply accepted it, the magic was content to stop its storming. It felt like the ocean, as ironic as that was considering who she was with, settled into gentle waves.

Movement at the end of the alley caught her eye and Emma dragged herself out of the urge to fist a hand in his hair and tug him back to see what it was.

One of the creatures had found them, and was stalking closer.

It was bald, leathery skin stretched over four stout, awkward limbs and a low-lying body with four heads, all slithering around each other, necks rising to be taller than she was. It was something between dog and lizard and feline and all unnatural, lips parting back to reveal deathly sharp teeth beneath as it hissed.

She flung out a hand in a protective impulse, throwing desperation and anger at the closest face. The quick fireball blew up in its eyes and it skittered back, throwing up a hissing howl as it swiped a claw blindly into the alley. She grabbed at Killian and shoved him ahead of her, sprinting for the other side of the alley and praying it wasn't a dead end.

It terminated in a blank wall, narrow passages branching in both directions. Killian yanked her down one of them, dragging her along while the creature screed out a call behind them.

"Where are we going?" Emma panted as they emerged into a street again and the pirate took off.

He pointed to large round building that she had been too distracted by the magic to notice before. It rose up a good three stories above the street, dominating its neighbors, still intact as far as she could make out, though with all the arches in the architecture it was difficult to say.

Hot panting to the side gave her just enough warning to screech to a halt, pulling Killian with her and a creature barreled past. They weren't extremely agile, and it skittered after them in a loping sort of run, one head rearing back in an ugly screech. It was answered by more cries on either side, and Emma ran a bit faster.

She had a knife still tucked into her boot and Killian had his hook, but neither weapon would be much good against more than one of these things.

"We've got company," she warned, darting into an alcove for an instant to let another of the creatures go lumbering by. She took advantage of the short break to fish the knife out of her boot before straightening up.

"I'm aware of that darling," Killian yelled back. They fell into step again, getting closer to the big round building in a winding route that left the less mobile creatures just barely missing each time.

Abruptly, she looked up and they were there. Great double doors were hanging barely open. Emma burst on another burst of speed, forcing tired legs to go just a little bit farther. Killian slipped through behind her and tugged her down a hallway. His hook flashed out just before they burst into sunlight again and a metal gate slammed down after them with a resounding clang.

Emma bent over, resting her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. They were in standing in a round sand pit with sheer walls rising around, broken at intervals by more tunnels like the one they just came out of. A ways up, the walls fell back into wide stairs.

"That should buy us some time," the pirate said, straightening up.

"Time for what?" Emma asked.

"I've got a..." his hand went up to the chains around his neck and the pirate paused mid-sentence, "The sodding witch stole it!" he burst out.

"Stole what?" she asked, rounding the arena for the next tunnel. She was hoping one of them would lead to weapons or something else she could use to defend them.

"The magic bean," Hook snarled, "the one I compared you to."

Emma flashed him a look over her shoulder, moving onto the next tunnel. "Very romantic, that."

"Well, Cora was standing right there love," he pointed out, mimicking her actions of checking tunnels, "I could hardly reveal my back-up plan."

She whirled to face him. "That was a back-up plan?" They were on opposite ends of the arena now, and his reply echoed against the stone walls.

"I felt it necessary to have something, in case you lovelies succeeded or Cora betrayed me," Hook answered, "restoring a piece of magic is a fair sight easier than creating one."

They met again at the far side of the circle, and Emma peered into one last tunnel. "So what was your brilliant plan to restore it?"

"I hadn't quite worked that bit out yet," the pirate confessed.

A flicker of something too small to be one of the creatures caught her eye at the top of the wall and she took a few steps back to see better. "Hey!"

There were shimmers, like distinct heat hazes, at the edge of the stairs between the section that was partitioned off. "Hey!" Emma called up.

_Hey?_ the voice, not seeming to have a distinct source, was groggy, like someone who'd just been woken _What in the name of the River Styx is that supposed to mean?_

_Calm Father, _the second voice was female, and sharper, more alert, _the girl intends it as a greeting._

_Apologies little mortals_ she said, addressing them now, _we were not aware there were any left here._

_Why should we apologize? _demanded a third voice, male again, _Look Thena, you and I can have adventures again. We take the mortals and give the beasts a challenge such as they have never faced before!_

Emma took a step closer to Hook, weighing their chances against the things she'd woken versus the things outside and whether she could make a break for it. The pirate glanced at her and stepped closer. "Emma, what did you do?" he hissed.

_She woke us _the voice was commanding, and female, but not the other female, who had fallen quiet.

"Who are you?" Hook demanded.

Without warning, one of the hazes broke away, moving down the wall to stop in front of the pirate. _I am Ares, god of war, and you, puny mortal, will serve me well as a host._

The magic flared inside her, and Emma threw it out without thought. It passed straight through the place where the shimmer had been as Hook went rigid.

Something hot brushed against her and Emma turned, already swinging. The haze went down as though the thing it contained had ducked, and the heat rested against both her upper arms. _Listen to me! _it was the female they had heard, speaking evenly and clearly, _They still fear us, but even now the creatures are creeping in._

As though to underscore the words, there was a hissing coming from the tunnels that got only louder as the seconds passed.

_You will not stand a chance against them alone_ it was a fact, not a threat, _ and I can do nothing without a body. Will you let me help you?_

"Do I have another choice?" Emma asked.

_Not a desirable one_ the voice said _you could try and open a portal before they get here, but with your lack of experience, you would fail._

"Fine," the blonde agreed, "but I want my body back when all this is done."

The shimmer disappeared from her sight and Emma shivered. For all the heat that the hazy figure had produced, it was a chill in her mind, a careful meld.

Athena brushed the sand off her hands and straightened up. Ares was being his usual unthinking male self and attempting to force his way into the mortal's body. She could see what the war-god could not, that the pirate was far older than he appeared, enough to keep her sometime-lover at bay.

_"Lover?"_ Emma chimed in in the back of her mind, _"I remember you being siblings or something like that."_

A wry smile twisted Athena's lips. "Do you believe everything you read?" she asked aloud.

Hook looked quickly over at her, and she could see Ares battling for dominance behind those blue eyes as the first of the hydras broke free of their fear and charged at them.

Athena snatched the male's wrist and dragged his aside, raising a hand as she did so. It had taken her a long time to be able to use magic, her rational mind rebelling against it, but she had decades of practice and the fireball formed in her palm almost instantly.

She took in the color, filed it away for later contemplation, and cast a ring around them. It would hold the hydras for only as long as they were awed by the sudden display, so she quickly turned to her companion.

"Hook," she fished through Emma's memories for his name and corrected herself, "Killian." Shock crossed his face at the word, but there would be time for that later. "Stop fighting Ares. I need you to hold back the hydras long enough for me to create a portal. He knows best how to fight them."

She saw the exact moment Emma's pirate gave in (_"He's not my pirate"_ Emma protested in the back of her head, but the goddess ignored the girl's denials) and her violent war-god surfaced. His lips twisted in a smile she recognized, one that meant there was about to be bloodshed.

"Always a pleasure to fight with you Thena," Ares greeted. He lifted the hook, examining the sharp edge with a nod of approval.

She summoned the sword waiting up with the others (_"So that's where it was"_ Emma huffed) and pressed it into his hands. "You as well."

He charged through the ring of white flames at the same moment she dispelled them and engaged the first hydra, dancing sideways with a laugh and slicing his sword through the first neck that got too close. A well-placed fireball prevented two more heads from forming from the stump and she bent to her work.

She had to keep stopping to blast fire as Ares sliced through the almost-dragons, needing to stop completely as a hydra stepped on the designs she had been melting into the sandy floor. Athena melted a spearful of sand into glass and stabbed it in the heart, then flitted across the arena to stand back to back with Ares.

He flashed her a grin as he fended off sharp teeth. "I told you we make quite the team."

"Hook said that to Emma," Athena corrected, slipping one of the beasts into another with a well-placed spell. (She answered Emma's shocked _"how?"_ with _"he has access to Hook's memories, as I have access to yours, and yes, I know what you were dreaming while Snow was cavorting in the netherworld."_)

"Isn't that close enough?" he asked.

The hydras were starting to back off as their numbers thinned, remembering their fear of the beings who made this place their base. Athena exploded a fire wall in front of them to encourage further retreat and turned to the task of creating a portal, not answering Ares' question.

After a few moments uninterrupted work, the glass designs had been traced over and run through with enough magic to make it work. She couldn't send them back to Storybrooke, as she explained to Emma, but she could send them to someone who might be able to help them.

All too soon, if you listened to Ares, Athena straightened up and sent the final jolt of magic through the runes. While she was waiting for that to take effect and Ares was dealing with the last couple of hydras brave enough to show their faces, Athena turned inward.

_"I've a gift for you,"_ she told the girl.

_"What sort of gift?"_ Emma asked.

For answer, Athena reached forward into the space above the portal where the fabric between worlds was already thin, feeling Emma's disbelief as the mortal watched her own hand disappear into thin air. She pulled it back with something slender and wooden tucked between her fingers. _"It was given to your mother and left in the Enchanted Forest with the curse,"_ the goddess explained, _"blow it if you need help."_

Then Athena wrenched herself away, leaving Emma standing by an open portal with what looked to be a whistle clutched in her hand. She tucked it away into a pocket and turned. "Hook!" she called.

The pirate turned and, with Athena's presence still fading, she saw when Ares too yanked himself away. Hook raced across the sand, casting a glance over his shoulder at the creatures who were beginning to gather themselves for another charge.

"Onward into the unknown, darling?" he asked, offering his hand.

Emma took it, but only so they wouldn't get separated and lost in the space between worlds, and nodded.

They jumped, and the darkness welcomed them like old friends.

* * *

Henry, eager to escape his math homework, leapt up at the knock on the door and ran to get it. Snow and James were supposed to have been back from the grocery store fifteen minutes ago, but since the curse had broken there was always somebody who wanted to talk to one or both of the pair. They had become the unofficial leaders of the town and as such had to deal with all the problems.

"Snow, what's three-fifths times two-sev..." Henry trailed off. The woman on the side had red hair so dark as to be almost brown, pulled up in an elegant bun atop regal features. Her dress, covered in blue sparkles, would have fit in perfectly with a page out of his book, but stood out like a sore thumb here.

"You must be Henry," said the woman on the other side of the door. When he tried to slam it shut, she extended a hand, and he ran into an invisible force. "My daughter will be so glad to see you."

Henry pulled in a breath to scream, but the world dissolved in purple smoke before he could make a sound.

* * *

**Nobody figured it out, but the hint in the last chapter was a quote from Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters. Hermes(talking about the Olympians): "Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is remind each other that we're related for better or for worse... and try and keep the maiming and killing to a minimum." Hey, if Adam and Eddy can play with fairytales, I can play with Greek mythology.  
**

**Your hint for where Athena sent them is: "It's all grand! And it's all green!" Anybody who figures out the location and the quote may prompt me something they'd like to see happen.  
**

**Um, about Henry. It was supposed to be Jefferson on the other side of the door, but Cora decided she wanted to show up instead. The review box doubles as a location for death threats! *runs and hides*  
**


	4. Follow the Yellow Brick Road

**If you recognize it, there's a extraordinarily high probability I don't own it.  
**

* * *

The blackness receded all at once, dumping them out into another forest, this one shrouded dark by cover of night. Air rushed out of her lungs as they fell a few inches to hit something hard that dug into her back. It was cold, angular and rocky, playing sharp contrast to the warm pirate squashing her into the ground.

"Let me up," Emma protested, pushing at him and trying to squirm away.

Hook's response was to heave his weight up and hover over her, pinning her there. He remained unmoved by the ineffective shove, far too smug for his own good. "But I rather like where I am," the look he was giving her was nothing short of salacious, "there are more enjoyable activities that can be done with a woman on her back."

The bolt of heat that shot through her had everything to do with the rebellion her magic was performing and absolutely nothing to do with Hook. Emma repeated this to herself firmly, stilling as she felt the magic start to bubble. She really didn't want to start blowing up this world too.

"Emma?" She wasn't an expert, but vicious pirates weren't supposed to sound that worried, especially not just because she failed to reply.

"Get up," she persisted, stopping herself before she shoved him again. The magic sparked brightly every time she touched him and she didn't need to give it any more incentive to explode. "We need to figure out where we are and who Athena was talking about."

Focusing on an agenda was a lot easier than trying to sort out the leather-wearing conflict she was currently traveling with.

Hook heaved a sigh that would have sounded a lot more regretful had he not taken his sweet time getting up. He offered her a hand up, but Emma sat up herself. She glanced down to make sure she wasn't putting her hand in a hole and found yellow bricks under her palm.

Yellow bricks.

Emma looked up, following the path as far as she could, tracing it until it turned away in the undergrowth. "Follow the yellow brick road," she muttered.

"What was that love?" Hook asked.

"The yellow brick road," Emma pushed herself fully to her feet and looked in the opposite direction down the road, but there was no helpful sign telling her which way was to the Emerald City. "We're in Oz."

"Do tell," Hook said, and he was suddenly right behind her, so close she swore she could feel his heartbeat against her back, completely disregarding the concept of personal space.

"Hook," she warned, hating the way that did not come out as forcefully as she had intended, and he promptly ignored the warning.

"Don't react love," he breathed in her ear, and before she could snark back anything, he continued, "there's someone watching us."

"Where?" Emma whispered back, trying not to move her lips.

He hummed, skimming his nose over the pulse hammering in her throat before he replied. "Just behind us, a bit to the right, in a tree."

The blonde reached down inside herself, seeking emotion to shape and power the magic. Hope and trepidation together flared into flickering life within the cage of her fingers, throwing dancing white light over the shadowy clearing.

There was a shriek, far too high pitched to belong to any self-respecting male, and the girl toppled out of the tree to land ungracefully on the ground. Her oversized cloak had come up to be tangled around her form in the fall, a knot she was only making worse by struggling.

Hook reached her first, crossing the clearing in swift strides while Emma followed more slowly behind, holding the fireball in her palm aloft as a makeshift lantern. The pirate wrenched their watcher to her feet by a skinny arm, holding tight as she twisted and fought, hissing half-intelligible curses as she jerked at the grip and the cloak still over her.

He snagged the rough black fabric and yanked it back, revealing angular features, a chin sharp enough to cut butter, a waterfall of raven hair, and dark eyes.

And green skin.

"Dorthia crush your bones!" she spat, tugging against Hook's grip. For all her flailing, the pirate held tight, capturing her other wrist with a deft flick of his hook when she swung at him. The girl's movements halted momentarily at the cool metal, and the blonde pounced on the break.

"Who are you?" Emma asked. The girl, though she was probably too old for such a label, ceased her struggles and straightened her spine.

"I am Elphaba," she tossed back, "do you regularly assault strangers?"

"You're the one who was fighting lass," Hook pointed out, "I can hardly be faulted for restraining you."

Elphaba pointedly ignored him, unwavering gaze fixed on Emma. There was something horribly familiar in her posture, something Emma had seen in the mirror too many times to count. The younger female was bracing for something, an insult, an impact, not sure which would be the worse fate.

"Let her go," the words escaped her before Emma could reel them back, knowing that wasn't the best idea, but still unwilling to take them back. She saw too much of herself, a younger, not as tough and broken Emma in the dark-haired girl before her, and crazy as it was, she wanted to change things.

Apparently Hook shared this sentiment, but without her mostly-sentimental reasoning. "Are you mad?" he asked.

Elphaba took advantage of his surprise. She wrenched one hand free and snapped her fingers in his face, biting out a single word in a foreign language. Something sparked at the tips of the long fingers and Hook hit the ground hard.

"What did you do?" Emma demanded. She dropped down beside the pirate, feeling for a pulse. A weight lifted from her shoulders when the hand that wasn't clutching flames found a steady pulse. He wasn't dead. That the very thought made her breath catch she attributed to not wanting someone else to leave her. Despite the fact Hook switched alliances as easily as some people changed clothes, he was still a constant in this rapidly shifting landscape of worlds.

"Just knocked him out," Elphaba looked sinister lit from underneath, and the words, for all they rang true, were careless, "I wanted to talk to you, one sorceress to another."

Emma straightened, refusing to lose any advantage in this. Elphaba was still slightly taller when they were both standing up, but it made her feel better not to have the other towering over her so completely. "You wanted to talk," she growled, "so talk."

"I'm going to see the Wizard," the raven-haired woman said bluntly, "you should come with me."

"Why?" Emma demanded.

"You're a stranger in this land," the sorceress replied, "you need someone who knows how it works. And," she held up a finger to stall Emma's protest, "the Wizard is more likely to see a pair of sorceresses than he is to see a complete stranger or 'the green girl'," the words were dripping with venom, "I have a problem, it looks like you have a problem, this way gets our problems fixed faster."

The blonde considered it for a moment. Elphaba wasn't lying, and at the moment, the Wizard seemed to be the best lead on a way back to Henry and Elphaba would know this world. "Alright," she agreed, "but he comes with us." She nodded to the pirate still sprawled unconscious at their feet.

"I can't abandon him, I sort of owe him," Emma hurried to explain, "I left him on a beanstalk."

The eyebrow that arched in her direction displayed exactly how impressed Elphaba was with this explanation. Nevertheless, the sorceress sat down opposite Emma, her back to a tree."You know my name," Elphaba pointed out, "what's yours?"

"Emma," she answered. She waved the handful of fire in his direction. "he's Hook."

Dark eyes lit on the attachment Hook had in place of a hand. "For that?"

Emma nodded wordlessly, copying Elphaba in settling down against a tree.

"There's a story there," the sorceress trailed off, inviting her to continue. Emma would be lying if she said she wasn't tempted. Swapping stories, especially stories that felt more like fairytales than reality, would have been an easy way to pass the time until Hook woke back up. But the tale of Milah was too personal, too delicate to be handed over to an almost-stranger.

"There is," she agreed, and changed the subject. "Who's Dorthia?"

Apparently Elphaba liked this topic, because she was quick to jump on it. "A Hero who lived a long time ago," she replied, "She was possibly the greatest sorceress ever to walk Oz, could summon windspouts to ride upon, strong enough to carry boulders," the other woman's tone was dripping with admiration, "that's how she freed the east from the Ruby Lady, just dropped a boulder on her head."

"But the most-talked about part is how she died," Elphaba continued, "some say she transformed herself into the winds she rode, others say she left Oz entirely."

"What did happen?" Emma asked, interested despite herself.

Black-clad shoulders rose and fell. "No one knows. She just vanished one day. One of the more popular theories is that she's still holed up somewhere in her tower. No one's ever found it, so no one knows."

A groan interrupted the continuation of the tale, preceeding Hook's return to the world of the living.

"Hook?" Emma leaned over, shaking him. One eye cracked open then screwed shut again as his hook came up to ineffectively bat at the dancing white flames. Emma curled her fingers around into a fist, understanding perfectly what he was getting at, extinguishing the light. Darkness settled over their little clearing, momentarily blinding her.

"What did you hit me with?" the pirate hissed. Emma could make out the outline of him, slowly sitting up

Elphaba's silhouette shrugged. "It's a straightforward sleep command."

"Think you can teach me that?" Emma asked. Having the ability to take someone down with nothing more than a snap of fingers sounded pretty good in her books.

Hook groaned again. "I'm doomed aren't I?" he asked no one in particular.

"Pretty much," Emma agreed, "now let's get going." She got up and heaved him to his feet, pretending not to notice when he swayed for a step or two before evening out, and the three of them started down the yellow brick road. In a few steps, the moonlight had swallowed them up.

* * *

"Out of curiosity," Hook's tone was mild, which never meant good things, "if a group of flying things was following us at a distance, were for the past hour, and have now started closing in, what might that mean?"

Elphaba stopped, glancing back over her shoulder. Emma did the same, and found the hazy group of silhouettes darting around the sky.

"Flying monkeys," Elphaba said dismissively, resuming her forward progress. The soil in this particular section was almost the same color as the road, and they needed to watch carefully to make certain they stayed where they wanted to go. "No danger to us."

Before now, Emma hadn't realized how much her lie detection was attached to her magic. It rippled, shivering through her under the lie, itching in her palms to be free.

"You're lying," the blonde accused, soothing the power back down. She had gotten good at that in the time they'd been traveling, she'd only almost blown up Hook once and he had completely deserved it for waking her up.

Well, that and his insinuation she liked waking up to him.

Which she didn't. At all.

Elphaba blew out a breath. "Flying monkeys take magical things," she confessed, glancing up at the winged forms. They were wheeling near-directly overhead now, painting dark shadows on the ground and making it still harder to follow the yellow brick road. "Books, spells, people."

"So you two just became very dangerous company," Hook surmised.

"As long as we don't show magic we'll be fine." That statement might have been a lot more reassuring if the sorceress hadn't paired it with another glance at the sky. If she hadn't trained herself to be hyper-aware of her surroundings, Emma might have missed the way Hook sulked a half-step closer to her as one of the shadows swept over them, blocking the sun for a heartbeat.

There was no signal that she heard, no helpful screech or raging war cry. One second Elphaba was walking in front of her, looking down to pick out the bricks from the dirt, the next she was sprawled across the ground with a large hairy form atop her. It was like no story Emma had ever been told, half-again as large as a person with a wingspan to match, fur as dark as its raven feathers.

The magic itched back into her palms, and Emma seized it; shaped it with determination, fletched it with protective instinct, and fired it like a bow. Her spell, if spell it could be called, caught it in the wings just unfurling to take off again and the monkey went tumbling sideways off Elphaba.

Somewhere, someone was cackling at the irony. The display of magic was just, it seemed, what the rest of the flock had been waiting for.

They descended from all directions, swooping in from the sides, dropping from above at speeds that seemed destined to dash them against the grass. Emma reached for the knife tucked away and started hacking away. She had never been the best with knives, and she still got air more than monkey, but it was something. She heard Elphaba start chanting something in the background, the words foreign, the syllables rising and falling almost musically, a sound that cut off abruptly. She twisted around to see what had happened and found Elphaba on the ground again, struggling with a monkey clamping her mouth shut.

An impact drove the breath from her lungs as one of the monkeys crashed into her at full speed, dragging her sprawling form across the grass. She heard Hook yell her name, but she had no attention to spare. Emma hissed as the creature aggravated hurts, given by the hydras and not quite healed, and shoved a handful of fire into its face. She could do fire, very easily. Healing was still beyond her reach, but she could do fire, all it took was anger or indignation and she was feeling that right now.

The monkey screeched something, drawing back in a panic, and more joined it. They pinned her down as one, with lighter fur that stood out against the hoard of black-covered creatures, approached. Emma writhed, fighting them, but no matter what she tried she couldn't break their hold. The lighter monkeys clasped something around her neck. It was hot from the sun, and heavier than anything that size had any right to be.

As soon as the latch on it clicked, it felt like something had been switched off. She had never thought she relied on her magic, but it felt as though she had suddenly stopped hearing or seeing. Her magic was gone, whisked away all at once, and Emma hardly noticed when two of the larger monkeys picked her up between them and lifted off.

Elphaba hung limp between a pair of the creatures, already waiting in the air, and Hook's captors joined them seconds later. The whole brigade fell into formation, lofting high into the air and settling into quick wingbeats that carried them along at dizzying rates of speed.

She had just enough of her bearings to realize they were headed west.

* * *

Henry pulled open the second door and found himself staring at a tiny little room. It had wooden walls, like an old-fashioned cabin, like everything else, and he left the door hanging open while he plodded back to the window. the room he was currently trapped in featured nothing more than a bed, the closet, another door that led to a bathroom, a third that he assumed led out, but was stuck shut, and a window that looked out into the forest.

He pressed his cheek to the glass and wished he knew what was going on. The woman who'd kidnapped him had given him her name, Cora, before she dropped him off here, but otherwise he'd had no further interactions.

Craning his mind, he wished for his storybook back, if only so he could find any mentions of any Cora. The name tugged at his memory for some reason but he couldn't remember why.

A the next exhalation painted fog across the glass, and with the tip of a finger he began to trace letters across the pane, joining them together in cursive like he'd been learning in school. _Once... Upon..._

Motion below caught his eye, and his finger froze on the glass as his breath caught, almost not daring to believe Cora would put him somewhere where people would pass. But to his delight, the black, white, and brown blob solidified into Archie and Pongo.

"Archie!" he screamed. Henry pounded on the glass with both hands, willing it to break. Even if he couldn't escape, Archie could go back and get Snow and James and they could burst in here, swords blazing and rescue him, just like in the book.

"Really Henry," said Cora behind him. Henry jumped, whirling around to plaster his back against the cool glass. He hadn't heard her come in.

"You think I would be so careless as to let them hear you?" she asked, "I thought my daughter would have raised you better than that."

"Y-your daughter?" Henry asked, seizing on the information she was dropping. It was like Operation Cobra all over again, but this time it was just him. The thought made him straighten his back and face her down. He was the hero of this story and heroes did not let themselves look cowed.

Cora ignored the question. "Such a curious child," she remarked. Henry half-turned, seeing Archie stopped opposite his window to let Pongo sniff at a tree. The dalmatian nosed around in the roots, and he felt his heart sinking.

"Good _will_ win," he told her, "and they will find me. Family always finds each other."

Cora laughed, a high sound that he instantly disliked. It was nothing like Snow's birdish giggles or James' warm chuckles or even Regina's rare mirth.

"Believe what you will child," she admonished, "no one is coming to rescue you."

But out of the corner of his eye, he saw what she did not. Pongo was straining at his leash toward where Henry was being held, barking furiously, and though there was no sound, he could easily imagine Archie desperately trying to calm the dog. Henry had to force back the smile that threatened to break out over his face.

Operation Raven, mission: escape from Cora, was a go.

* * *

**It was so tempting to name this chapter "Follow the Yellow Brick Road (until you're snatched off it)" but I couldn't for spoiler reasons.**

**Last chapter's hint was indeed for the land of Oz, and came from Wicked, specifically, the song One Short Day. As a fun fact, I wrote this chapter listening to the Wicked soundtrack.**

**The hint, "special connection", for the next chapter is for a person.**

******Random little side note, have any of you have seen Paleyfest? They asked about Charming and Snow being protective parents, "if, hypothetically, Emma starts looking at Hook the wrong way?" And Jennifer goes "Starts?" in this disbelievingly incredulous tone. It was beautiful. If you haven't seen it, you need to.  
**

******Review?**


	5. Escape, or the attempt thereof

**Sorry for the hiatus. Real Life decided to cut into my writing time. Enjoy.  
**

**The previous chapter got edited, so if you something doesn't make sense, it possibly got changed.**

**If you recognize it, I do not own it.  
**

* * *

Emma sat on the ledge of the window, kicking her heels against the stone of the tower's walls, watching the monkeys flit to and fro beneath her. She wedged a finger under the necklace, tugging again, equally as futilely as every time before, trying to relieve the chafing of the thick metal band. There were symbols carved into it, but there were no convenient mirrors here to see and they didn't feel like English.

She had tried the door, nearly broken her toe kicking it in a fit of frustration, her magic was still out of her reach, and there was nothing in her little cell except a bucket in the corner. She was well and truly stuck here, and that simply wouldn't do.

Emma swung her legs back inside the cell and started emptying her pockets onto the stones, taking inventory. A handful of plants that were edible, if a bit bland; her keys, for all the good they did her without a car; a hollow wooden reed; one cell phone, completely dead and with a cracked screen just to complete the effect; a few bobby pins; her handcuffs; and a paper clip. No One Ring to Rule Them All had helpfully appeared in her pocket, though with the way things were going, she wouldn't be surprised to find herself in Middle Earth.

The blonde picked up the reed, twirling the dead plant between her fingers as she considered it. Athena had given this to her, with instructions to use it if she ever needed help.

Well, this certainly qualified as 'needing help' and she didn't have anything to lose. Honestly, she expected nothing to happen, except maybe give some monkeys a headache.

Emma lifted the reed to her lips and blew.

The sound that came out was low and mournful, a wail of a wolf's howl, and the magic inside her poured out through it, as though she had opened a floodgate. A torrent of it went pouring out to some distant shore, a slender stream looping back to her to promise help.

She blew until the air in her lungs ran out, determined to make her call, her spell, whatever as strong as possible; and only then did she lower it.

Panting slightly, Emma looked at the door, waiting for the magic to do... something. That was how magic was supposed to work, in every story she'd ever read.

There were a few agonizing seconds where nothing happened, then the door swung open.

She barely heard the whistle go clattering to the floor. Now, she was certain, Fate pulled out her life and went _how much more can we put Emma through before she completely loses it? _and then went about two steps beyond that line, just for the heck of it.

The reed rolled across the stones and fetched to a stop against a black boot. He reached down and plucked it up, examining the wood with the amused air of someone who has just recovered something that has changed since they saw it last. _Maybe I'm hallucinating. Yeah, that's a good explanation._ _While I'm hallucinating, Regina could show up with ice cream._

He wasn't dressed as she had ever seen him, furs instead of the dark leather that now hung beside her desk, and her memory of his features might have gotten a little fuzzy, but it was still unmistakeably him.

"Graham?" she managed out.

"That is my name." His voice hadn't changed at all, and neither had the grin, warm and caring. He stashed the whistle through his belt and crouched down in front of her to bring them to eye level, because there was no chance she was going to stand up. Not when she was having a conversation with a man who had _died in her arms_.

"You're dead," the blonde said, almost choking on the words.

"Aye," he agreed, "I am."

"How?" she asked. How are you here, how did you know, how did you get here, how long do you have, they all tripped against each other until all that came out was the one word.

"You asked for help, didn't you?" Graham replied. He shifted his weight to brace a knee against the floor before he continued, "You used my whistle and..." he paused uncertainly, "magic happened?"

She realized abruptly that the huntsman he had been before he got dragged into the mess that was her family tree had probably had about as much experience with magic as she did. Less even, because he had never almost blown up a ridiculously attractive pirate.

"Hook," she burst out, then hurried to explain. Graham had no idea of her current company, and the Huntsman wouldn't even know who Captain Hook was, but he was already nodding.

"I know," he assured her, "I'm here to rescue your pirate too."

"He's not-" Emma began, then cut herself off mid-protest. She was tired of explaining that Hook was not _her_ anything, she could live with the inconsistency for a while, and she had no idea how long she had before the flying monkeys came to check on her. "You know what, forget it. I think they stashed him a few floors down," she said instead.

Graham nodded and regained his feet, straightening to his full height. Emma scrambled up after him and followed him out the door onto a staircase that curved with the walls of the tower. The opposite wall was perhaps ten feet away, but the drop all the way down to the ground, made the distance appear that much farther away.

The huntsman was already headed down, heedless of the drop, and Emma followed, sticking close to the inner wall.

"What happened?" Graham asked conversationally, "After, I, died." The words became halting, almost apologetic

"Regina tried to poison me," Emma replied. This was going to be Breaking the Curse in bullet points, and she hit about one per door. "Henry ate the turnover instead," another room, "I woke him up with True Love's Kiss," another empty room, "which triggered the end of the curse," another door opened and shut, "Gold sent a dementor after Regina," empty, "because he has something against our Madame Mayor," empty, "and nothing better to do." Again, the room was both empty and dusty, "so we sent the dementor through the Mad Hatter's hat." She opened another door and shut it quickly, blocking the old bones from sight, "it grabbed onto me, Snow jumped in after-"

"And you wound up in the Enchanted Forest," Graham finished, "that part I know of."

Emma stopped, and Graham continued a few steps more before he realized that she wasn't following and turned back. "How?" she asked suspiciously, "what, could you see us?"

"Not... seeing," he clarified slowly, "more like a general sense of how things are going. It's..." he hesitated, "difficult to explain."

Of course it was. It was like there was some law that anything even vaguely magical must be nearly-impossible to explain. It gave her a headache just thinking about it.

"Want me to take a look at that?" he offered, motioning to the metal necklace. Emma self-consciously dropped the hand that had gone up to fiddle with the collar again. Until he pointed it out, she hadn't been aware she was doing it.

"Let's just find Hook, find Elphaba, and get out of here," she moved past him down the stairs, not looking at him.

A dozen or so doors later, the blonde pulled one open, stuck her head in and almost shut it again before the room's occupant registered. Hook was slumped against one of the side walls, not moving.

"Hook!"

Wait, _what? _

Emma was quite certain she had not authorized that statement to be that worried, he was just a pirate she happened to be traveling with, for heaven's sake, but apparently her traitor of a mouth decided it didn't have to check with her before it said things like that. She ducked into the pirate's cell and crouched next to him, winding her hand around his wrist to check for a pulse.

The part of her that had reached freak-out max about the time she was fighting a dragon and had since ceased to be surprised, noted that she seemed to be making a habit of having to make sure he was alive.

"Don't fret Swan," Emma looked up to find Hook watching her, eyes clear if half-lidded, "everything is still intact. Though if you want to check for yourself, you'll get no complaints from me."

Emma rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to whack him, even as something she hadn't been aware was tense relaxed. If he was being suggestive, he was fine. "In your dreams," she returned.

"Emma," she looked back to him at the softer tone and found something very like fury darkened his eyes into black sapphires. She had learned very quickly that it was always best to keep your eyes on the angry person, made it easier to dodge whatever they threw your way, and that instinct froze her now as he reached up towards the metal encircling her neck.

"What did they do to you?" he demanded.

She pulled away quickly and pushed herself to her feet. "It's just a collar Hook, not the end of the world. Now come on, we've still got a witch to find."

"Sorceress," Graham corrected. The huntsman had moved while she wasn't paying attention, lurking awkwardly by the window now.

"Swan, who is that?" the pirate questioned, heaving himself into to his feet. He, she noticed, hadn't been collared like she had. Lucky.

"Huntsman, meet Captain Hook," she said, gesturing between them, "Hook, this is Graham, the sheriff before me."

The pirate's eyes flickered to hers, and she knew he was recounting the story she'd confessed in limbo. "I believe you told me he was dead," Hook said.

"He was," she hurried to say, "is, whatever. He's here now."

"I am," Graham chipped in, "I'll be gone by sunset." Emma gave him a small smile, thanking him for being helpful before Hook tugged her farther away from the window and the huntsman.

"I don't like it," the pirate told her quietly, "It's too bloody convenient."

"Then what do you propose we do," Emma shot back, matching his volume, "throw him out the window?"

She'd meant it sarcastically, but the way Hook paused told her he had been thinking about doing exactly that. "You cannot be serious," she hissed.

"Quite, princess," he replied, "in my experience-"

Whatever Hook's experience was, she didn't find out, because Graham chose that moment to interject. "I think I found your sorceress."

"You're sure?" she asked.

He glanced out the window, tracking something she couldn't see for a moment, then nodded. "As sure as I can be."

"Well then, lead the way," Emma told him, gesturing to the door.

He inclined his head in a way that was probably as close to a bow as someone raised a wild creature could get and led them back onto the curving stairs.

* * *

Belle hummed absently as she shelved books, reorganizing from where one of the children came tearing through looking for books on elephants. The work was repetitive and slightly monotonous, but she enjoyed it. It brought back memories of her time in the Dark Castle, when Rumple had started warming up to her and was trying desperately to pretend he hadn't. It still amused her how oblivious men, in general, could be; sorcerer or not.

The jangle of the bell alerted her to someone else entering, and she called out without turning around. "Sorry, we're closed for today."

"I'm afraid I didn't come for the books," replied a woman's voice behind her, "but if you have one that tells me where to find Rumpelstilstkin's dagger, I would be most grateful."

The last three volumes thundered to the floor, and the beauty turned to face the woman who was standing in her library.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Belle said, groping in her pockets for her phone or a weapon, mind going to the space in the bookshelf where she had hidden the map Rumpelstilstkin had given her. It was coded, of course, but nothing that hadn't yielded to the compiled knowledge of cleaning, or more often reading, the Dark One's extensive library. She came up empty-handed and cursed herself when she remembered her phone was charging on the receptionist desk.

"Perhaps I haven't made myself clear enough," replied the woman.

She waved a hand, the move almost dismissive, and Belle's vision went darkly purple as thick oily smoke, with a similar metallic tang as Rumple's magic, wrapped around her. It cleared and the librarian found herself face to face with the Storybrooke welcome sign. It was only the memory of the distinctly unfriendly dark magic user behind her that froze her feet from stepping back. Whoever she was, the woman had brought her here to eliminate the chance of witnesses. No one would dare venture this close to the line that would cost them their memories.

"That's more like it. Now, I could dig out the memory" the woman continued, as calm as though they were discussing what jam would go best with blackberry tea, "but I must warn you it's not the neatest of procedures. It would be far easier if you simply told me what I wish to know. Where is the dagger of the Dark One?"

In a single instant, everything crystallized as though the world had frozen, and Belle came to a horrified realization. This woman, whoever she was, could not be allowed to lay hands on Rumple's dagger. She would not stop until she had it, and she didn't care who she hurt in the pursuit.

Belle could give up her love's secrets, or have them ripped from her head. There was no winning option, but there was a choice. Her choice.

"I'll never betray him," Belle snarled.

And stepped over the line.

The force of it drove her to her knees, clutching her head with fingers that curled into claws. She looked up, crawling frantically backward as a woman in a regal blue dress approached, clicking her tongue in distaste.

"Who-who are you?" she asked, looking around for some clue as to where she was, who she was.

The woman clicked her tongue. "You silly girl," she said, "you see what love drives you to?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she stammered, wracking her mind for the answer. All that greeted her was a blank cavern, certainly no love that would drive her.

The woman was still eying her like she was a chess piece that had just moved in a way it wasn't supposed to, a bishop that had jumped like a knight. The other brunette crouched in a rustle of skirts, all elegance and deadly intent, and the beauty froze when fingers stroked under her chin, tipping her face up to meet a serpent's smile. "Yes, I believe you can still be of some use."

* * *

**Would anybody else like to see a scene on the show with Graham and Killian? Because I think that would be pretty awesome.  
**

**"Special connection" referred to Henry's little speech in 1x07 where he says "you two[Graham and Emma] do have a special connection."**

**I really should keep my evil sorceress on a shorter leash.*runs and hides from Rumple* Next chapter should be out a lot faster than this was.**

**Review?**


	6. Birthright

**Sorry for the delay. Thank you for bearing with me through finals, writer's block, Swanfire declarations of love (what was that nonsense anyway?), and other assorted nuisances.  
**

**If you recognize it, I do not own it.**

* * *

Graham had fallen back while they descended the stairs and said something to Hook, and now they were having a hushed conversation five steps behind her. The back of her neck kept prickling as they glanced surreptitiously up at her, checking she wasn't close enough to hear them, as though they were talking about her.

None of the half-words she could catch sounded like her name though, so eventually, Emma gave up and ignored them. If they wanted to be weird and secretive that was their problem. She focused instead on keeping the sleeve of her coat over her nose to avoid choking on the thick dust that flew into the air with every step. There had to be centuries worth of dust here, and she swore all of it was trying to invade her lungs at once.

The stairs ended in a circular space with corridors branching out, straight as far as she could tell. The light shedding down from the hole at the top of the tower was dim already, and it reached only a few steps into the tunnels before they turned into yawning inky mouths.

"-think on that," the huntsman ended to Hook, catching up to her. The dust didn't fly up as thickly around his boots as it did hers, something she was grateful for when he walked past, though there were still footprints as he paced between the tunnels.

There was a clatter behind her, the scratch of metal on metal, and Emma turned to find Hook putting his shoulder into a door at the bottom of the stairs. With a glance back at Graham, who was crouched in the mouth of one of the tunnels, she headed over.

"Trouble?" she asked wryly, as the door groaned an inch farther open, catching on something inside

"Slip through there, would you Swan? And see if you can find some sort of light," Hook said by way of reply, giving the door one last shove. It didn't open any farther, and the pirate stepped back to give her room.

Emma looked at the opening, then at him, giving him her best _oh-really_ look. Hook made a point of looking her slowly up and down.

"You won't get stuck," he told her, "And I'd rather not fall down stairs that may or may not be in that tunnel and break my leg, if it's all the same to you. I've done that, and there are _other activities_ that are better worth repeating."

It simply wasn't fair the way he managed to twist innocent words into something salacious. Emma rolled her eyes, at him in general and this in particular, and slipped through the half-open door. It was even darker inside, only the odd angle or grey shape for her to make out her surroundings, and she promptly stubbed her shin into something hard.

When she leaned over to feel what it was, her fingertips met some sort of cloth, smooth, yet strong, heaped into a bin about hip-high. A piece of it tore off in her hand and Emma tucked it away for inspection in better light before she continued feeling her way around.

A few boxes were scattered around the edges of the little room, and Emma riffled through them cursorily. There were assorted odds and ends, but nothing overtly useful, so she edged back out.

"Nothing," she reported, "unless you know how to turn fabric into a torch." She shook the scrap that had come off, sending dust flying and revealing it had been emerald once upon a time.

"My skills _are_ extensive," the pirate replied, and managed to sound like this was a simple fact that everyone knew unless they were hopelessly uninformed, "but they do not include creating lamps from cloth."

"Pity," Emma said, and used the scrap to tie her hair in a rough ponytail.

When she looked back up, he was watching her with something unreadable in his too-blue eyes. It was gone as quickly as she had seen it, but still she shivered and dropped her gaze to the floor, turning away to cross back to where Graham was waiting.

"This way," the huntsman told her, pointing into one of the tunnels, "Stick close."

"Did you know Hook?" Emma asked as she followed him into the darkness. The footsteps behind her faltered for a step, then proceeded without their owner saying anything, so she pressed on. "In the Enchanted Forest, or something?"

"I met someone who knew him once," Graham answered cryptically, and silence closed in on them, nearly as choking as the darkness.

This brought back memories. The last time she'd been walking with him in the dark, they'd just broken into the Mills family mausoleum and she'd just punched Regina. That was the last night he'd been alive and she couldn't help but feel that if she had somehow acted differently, the mayor wouldn't have felt the need to kill him.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, "for what happened. If I wasn't in the picture, Regina wouldn't have crushed your heart and-"

"Emma," he interrupted; and this was the Huntsman, not the slightly awkward sheriff she might have had something with, if they only had more time, "The Queen would have killed me eventually, if only for the sport of it. You gave me my freedom back, at the end. That's the most a wild creature can ask for."

She heard rustling, then something was pressed quickly into her grip. She jerked back, almost dropping the thing in surprise. Graham's hand was cold as a corpse, completely at odds with the fact he was walking and talking. Though the fact shouldn't have surprised her, it did.

"Blow this to bring help. It'll never bring me, that enchantment was once in a lifetime," he hissed urgently, and she could only nod, heedless of the fact that he couldn't see her, "but it will compel help, like Queen Susan's horn."

"Why am I not surprised Narnia is real," Emma sighed. She closed her fingers around it, and tucked the whistle back into its pocket in her jacket.

"You made me feel something," he told her, "missing my heart, you made me feel. Thank you, for everything."

Even though she knew he couldn't see her, Emma tried to smile. "You're welcome," she said, and it felt like closure, "we'll call it even, since you arrested me."

He chuckled, the sound just as warm as she remembered. Their surroundings were getting lighter with every step, and she could almost make out his silhouette.

"One last thing," his voice was close beside her ear, "Milah told me to ask you to take care of her grandson."

Emma blinked in confusion. Milah was Hook's dead love, how could Graham have known her? And besides, she already had Henry, and while she loved her son, she wasn't entirely certain she could deal with another kid. She turned, opening her mouth to ask what he meant, but the huntsman had vanished. A glance down showed that there was only one set of bootprints in the dust on the floor, and a shiver walked its way along her spine.

She'd never believed in ghosts, and would have suspected the whole thing of being a hallucination, but for one simple fact.

He had opened the door to her cell.

She didn't realize she'd stopped until Hook almost ran into her. "Swan?" he asked, hand going to her shoulder; to steady him or her, she didn't know.

"He said he knew Milah," the words tumbled out without her being fully aware of them, "said she wanted me to take care of her grandson."

His brow furrowed, though the part of her, growing larger with every revelation, that had had enough of freaking out, noted he didn't seem surprised by the mention of his dead love in conjunction with the huntsman. "I didn't know Bae had a son," Hook remarked at last.

"Who's Bae?" she asked.

The pause told her more than the words that followed it did. This was another story that needed to be shared carefully. "It's a long story, I'll tell you sometime," the pirate replied, "for now, I believe we've found our witch."

He pointed upward, and now that her attention was brought to it, Emma noted the commotion coming from one of the upper levels of the tower they had emerged into. This one was larger, featuring two staircases running along the walls, spiraling like a corkscrew.

They exchanged a look, communicating without words, and Hook took one of the staircases while she climbed up the other, seeking the noise.

She found the source roughly over halfway up the tower, sounds like explosions from behind a barred door. Emma ripping it open to find Elphaba, remarkably uncollared, standing in the center of the room, whipping out spells left and right. The sorceress was taking no prisoners, and no matter how the monkeys pressed, they couldn't make it to her through the barrage.

"Elphaba!" Emma called, holding the door wide. The Ozian glanced back, fired off one last spell, and ducked to the door in the cover that provided. Emma slammed the door shut as soon as the other female was clear, sending the bolt home.

Without a pause, Elphaba seized her by the wrist and started taking the stairs two at a time, leaving her to keep up as best she could. Below them, doors hammered as monkeys pounded at them. The creatures were strong, she'd give them that; and they'd be through soon.

"Shouldn't we be going down?" Emma demanded.

"Take too long," Elphaba gasped out, "I know a teleport, but I have to know where I'm going."

Teleporting. Another thing she hadn't thought was real and was about to get a first-person lesson in. Wonderful.

Still, if she had to pick between the monkeys and teleporting, she was going to pick the teleporting. It would make a good story for Henry when she got back.

Elphaba came to a screeching halt at the top of the staircase, so abruptly that Emma almost barreled her into the door that the stairs came to. She twisted the knob and shoved, hard, on the door that refused to budge.

"Unnamed god!" Elphaba swore, rattling the knob harder. The door stayed stubbornly locked, refusing to comply, even when the sorceress kicked it, though that had more effect on Elphaba than the barrier, if the way she grabbed her foot, hopped up and down and swore again was any judge.

"Let me," Emma shoved her aside, no time for niceties when winged monkeys were popping out of doorways like corks from bottles, and sank to eye level with the lock, fishing out a pair of bobby pins as she did so.

"The door's resistant to magic" Elphaba said.

"I was a thief long before I ever heard of magic," the blonde replied, jigging one bobby pin while she twisted the other. It had been a while since she'd had to use this particular skill, about since she'd started rooming with Mary Margaret, but it was like riding a bike. You never forgot.

"You never cease to amaze me," Hook sounded just as out of breath as she felt, but Emma didn't turn away from her focus on the lock.

The lock clicked open, and Emma pushed the door. It creaked as old hinges caught, but went open easily enough. Elphaba fired off something that exploded into a wall of shimmering sparks and disappeared through while she was getting up. She turned back, looking for Hook.

He was standing on a platform set too far away along the wall to easily jump, with no stairs between them. A design flaw rendered meaningless by the fact that the tower's inhabitants had wings. The same inhabitants that were pressing at whatever Elphaba had thrown up, scrabbling to get at them.

Emma glanced between the door and the pirate and the monkeys, and shrugged in what she hoped was an apologetic manner. She didn't particularly want to abandon him, or anyone really, to the flying creatures, but she had to get back to her family, and there wasn't time for him to climb all the way down and all the way back up.

He arced a brow as though to say _oh really now_, then took two long steps and jumped across the gap. He just made it, back foot slipping on the edge and tilting as he tried to regain his balance. Emma seized him by the front of his coat, hauled him forward through the doorway, and kicked it tightly shut after them.

"Leaving me again so soon?" Hook asked, utterly casual and smug as you please.

"Are you crazy?" Emma snapped. It was only when her fingers tightened reflexively in the fabric of his coat that she realized she was still holding on, and released it as though she'd been burned, stepping back to create some illusion of space between them.

He grinned at her and even though she was utterly furious at him for- for- for being a cocky, arrogant, full-of-himself _pirate_, he looked boyish and somehow innocent, even though he was anything but, when he grinned at her like that and she had to suppress a return smile.

"Not in the slightest darling," he replied, "Happy thoughts is all." Then he had the audacity to wink at her.

Emma huffed, turned away to see what Elphaba had gotten into and whether they needed to do anything like dance counterclockwise in a five-pointed star to teleport, and got her first good look at the room they had stumbled into.

Even with no knowledge whatsoever of the subject, she could tell that this was a magician's workshop. If the tables with things whirring away in constant motion or the books of foreign words didn't give it away, the look on Elphaba's face did.

The sorceress was standing in the center of the room, slowly spinning in circles, trying to take everything in.

"This is..." she began, but words seemed to fail her as she ran careful fingers along a book left open on one of the tables. She flipped it back, checking the inner cover, and her eyes widened to the point Emma was almost afraid they would pop out of her skull.

"This is Dorthia's tower," she breathed, looking back up, trying to impress the seriousness of this with her gaze alone. "It was thought to be lost."

"Wonderful," Hook deadpanned, and got no further.

The glass on the doors to the balcony splintered into a thousand gleaming fragments as a monkey went barreling through it. Hook seized him up by one wing and sent him careening into the next one through the opening. Emma snatched up the nearest object that looked like it could be used for stabbing things and took a swipe at the third one in.

The monkeys almost trampled each other in their haste to make it into the room, swiping at them. With only one access point, they were at an advantage over the creatures, and they pressed that.

Another window shattered, higher up this time, depositing a sprawl of feathers across the stone floor.

A second later, something grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back. Emma shrieked in rage and stabbed blindly backward, she kicked out, catching another, but the one behind her was dragging her determinedly toward the door. Abruptly, the resistance vanished, accompanied by a monkey's scream.

There was no time to look and see, since the monkeys had them surrounded. Stepping backward, Emma ran into Hook, and went back to back. It was like trying to fight a maelstrom, wings and arms reaching in nearly as fast as they could fend them off.

Elphaba's voice rose over the cacophony, chanting something in another language, the words rolling off her tongue, the syllables rising and falling almost musically.

Time slowed down in the silence that followed, seconds stretching across infinite distance, the battle frozen. There was a mounting pressure filling the room like a physical presence, the world holding its breath. Just when Emma felt things were about to start exploding, _something_ ceased resisting. The tide turned, and the pressure went leaking out.

To a one, the monkeys stopped everything they were doing and turned to face Elphaba. The effect was eerie, puppets who had possessed the semblance of living things until just a moment ago.

"What would you have of us Mistress?" asked one with white fur.

Hook summed up the entire situation quite nicely. "What the bloody hell was that?"

Elphaba ignored the question. "What were your orders?" she demanded of the light-furred monkey, who seemed to be the speaker.

"Mistress Dorthia ordered us to collect magical items and people and bring them here," the monkey answered, "so one of them could save her life."

"You will stop that," Elphaba ordered firmly.

A wave of nods went through the monkeys, and she continued. "You will provide me with a list of what you brought to here, you will stop attacking those two, and you will find me a map of Oz. Those who are not involved in those tasks will leave this room unless I call them back."

Another wave of nods went from one end to the other, and then the room emptied of monkeys with surprising speed.

"What was that?" Emma asked.

"I reworked a spell," Elphaba answered, tapping the pages of the book she was still holding, "the master spell for the flying monkeys. Easy enough with theory and the original manuscript, absolutely impossible if you don't know what the words were."

She stroked the spine . "And they said sorcery lessons were a waste of time."

"Can they get us to the Wizard?" interrupted Emma.

Elphaba's answering smile was stuffed full of delight and more than a little bit wicked. "They will do whatever I order them to do," she replied.

"Rum," Hook suggested. He was half-leaning, half-sitting on a table, hook tucked over his good arm where one of the monkeys had scratched him.

"You're a pirate," Emma pointed out, "don't you have some?" She should probably look at that, clean it out so it didn't get infected. The last thing he needed was to lose the other hand.

"Had," he corrected, "I used it on top of the beanstalk."

Had she been that naive sixteen year old, she might have considered that sweet, but she was not sixteen and he was a pirate, so she didn't. She swatted his hook away and pushed his sleeve farther up so she could look at the injury. There were three, shallow, running along the outside of his forearm where one of them had caught him with its nails.

"I knew you couldn't wait to get your hands on me," he quipped.

"Shut up," Emma sighed, poking the wound harder than strictly necessary. He winced and stopped talking, but the smug smile never faltered. She made a point of not meeting his eyes as she took the alcohol one of the monkeys found and doused his arm in it.

She had just finished neatly knotting his scarf around his arm when the light-furred monkey returned with a map. He unrolled it across a table, weighing down the corners.

Curious, Emma moved over to look at it. There was the Emerald City in the middle, with the west labeled Vinkus and the East Munchkinland. The yellow brick road was labeled too, a winding line that criss-crossed Oz. Elphaba was tracing a line from the tower to the City.

"We'll be there just after full dark," she announced.

"Then let's get moving," Emma answered.

Elphaba rolled up the map,crossed to the balcony, and whistled. Three monkeys landed on the railing, with grace belying their size, and the one of the middle swept up the sorceress before taking off again.

The pirate inclined his head in a way that might be called courteous, sweeping out his arm. "After you," Hook said.

Just to prove something, she kept her back straight and her movements even until the monkey picked her up. However, she couldn't quite stop herself from making a schoolgirl sort of yelp when the creature simply stepped backward into open air and dropped a few dozen feet before opening its wings.

The monkey flew up, and the wind carried them away.

* * *

Red inhaled deeply. She ignored Snow's not-so-subtle fear-scent, the smell of pie baking (her sort-of-sister had always had to do something when she was nervous, be it baking, hunting, or just clerical work), and all the other aromas that lingered in and around the apartment, searching.

_There._

Almost buried beneath everything else was the bitter irony taste of dark magic. It wasn't laced through with the sharp sweet of apple like the magic Regina had obligingly done for comparison, nor was it the steel-and-gold chill that clung to Rumpelstiltskin's.

It did have a strange after-taste to it, almost like...

"Straw," Red opened her eyes to look at the other women, "Dark magic, laced with straw."

Regina's shoulders slumped, and she rested her forehead in her fingers. Mary Margaret rested hand tentatively on the dark queen's shoulder and apparently took it as a victory when Regina didn't hex her.

"My mother could spin straw into gold," she confessed, "I never had the knack for it, but it was one of her favorite tricks. She's taken Henry."

"What would she want with him?" Red asked.

"Leverage," replied the mayor, "a way to get to me."

"We'll get him back," Snow told her, "Family always finds each other."

Regina shrugged the comforting hand off and fixed blazing eyes on the woman who had once been her daughter. "That is _your_ family motto, _Snow White_," she corrected briskly, "a family that does not include me."

"Whether I like it or not, you are part of our family," Snow replied, undeterred, "and we are going to find him." There was a part of Red that admired Snow for her faith in the power of good, and another _-that remembered all too clearly the taste of blood on a snowy night- _that scoffed at her naivete.

Both parts, however, called Snow pack-mate, and she was going to help in the way only she could.

Red cleared her throat, drawing the queens' attention to her. "I'll get the wolves to search the forest. If any of them scent him, they'll tell me."

"There are no wolves in Storybrooke," Regina's reply sounded more automatic than anything else.

Red smiled, that special smile she reserved when she needed or just wanted to remind someone of exactly who and what she was, the smile that was far too full of fang and wildness to belong to anything but a wolf. "There _weren't_," she corrected, and let herself out the door.

* * *

**I swear I have no control over anything anymore. The characters just do whatever they want and refuse to cooperate when I try to make them do otherwise.  
**

**Do you guys like getting the hints? If you do, you can guess who we're going to meet next chapter (hint:simple, utter, unadulterated loathing)  
**

**Review?**


	7. Old friends and new acquaintances

**I own the laptop with lots of problems that's across my knees, so if the owners of these people and places want to sue me, they can have that. It's probably not worth it though.  
**

* * *

Emma was severely tempted, when the monkeys deposited them on the front step of the green castle, to kiss the ground. The only thing that stopped her was the crowd that was gathered and the fact that Hook would never let her hear the end of it.

She had to admit though, it was certainly a way to make an entrance. When the monkeys set them down, Elphaba dusted herself off, stalked straight up to the front door, through the aisle that people scurried back to open up for her, and rapped on it.

The doors opened to either side as if by magic, and Emma followed, Hook trailing after her, glad to be away from all those prying eyes. As the doors were closing, she saw the monkeys settle themselves on either side like bouncers at a club.

"We're here to see the Wizard," Emma announced to the harried-looking woman behind the desk in what was very obviously a lobby.

"Do you have an appointment?" the secretary asked without looking up.

Elphaba planted her palms on the desk and leaned forward. "I have flying monkeys," she answered.

"That well may be," the woman answered, "but the Wizard is a busy man and I don't care if you're the Prince of Vinkus, you can't get in to see him without..." She swallowed whatever she was about to say next, too busy focusing on the shining curve of very sharp steel that had appeared as Hook leaned against the desk.

"I believe the lass made a request," Hook said, as casually offhand as though he did this everyday. And what did she know? Maybe he did. A captain had to keep order somehow.

"You can't..." she began, and squeaked when the hook made a pass toward her.

"I think you'll find I can, just as I'm certain you can figure something out," he hissed.

"The Good Witch might have some time," the secretary shoved her chair backward and rapped on one of the crystals hanging from the wall behind her desk, which began to glow with a steady white gleam. She turned her chair back to face them, but showed no compulsion to go anywhere within the range of the hook.

"She'll be down soon," the woman assured them.

"Very good," Hook replied. The effect would only have been completed had he then began to sharpen the hook, but he lacked either the materials or the desire to do so.

He made a very convincing villain when he wasn't flirting or being tied up, Emma mused, and something in the back of her head that sounded decidedly like Hook's voice started going on about tying him up in a completely different way. She shut it down as fast as possible, and started counting the pattern of floor tiles instead.

She had gotten up to twenty-three dark green and thirty-five paler green when the click of heels alerted her to the arrival of the Good Witch.

"Tell me the crystals aren't broken again," chirped a distinctly feminine voice, the sort that sounded more inclined towards giggling than having serious discussions, in a long-suffering sort of way, "I swear I just fixified them last week."

Emma looked up and had to blink back spots from her eyes. The Good Witch was wearing a brilliantly pink gown that puffed out at the bottom and sparkled whenever she moved. All of her sparkled like she'd been dipped in glitter, from her stained-glass blue eyes to her short golden hair to the equally pink heels.

"Glin?" Elphaba asked.

The bright woman's head snapped up so fast it was a miracle she didn't give herself whiplash. "Elphie!" she squealed, at ranges mostly used by bats.

"Ah," Hook gasped, reaching for his ears. Emma completely agreed with him. Human voices should not reach those kinds of pitches.

The Good Witch hurled herself at Elphaba, an oversized glittery pink bird taking flight, but what was more surprising was that Elphaba caught her, laughter ringing out. "I thought you went back home," she exclaimed, "was your sister not sick after all?"

"I did," the sorceress replied, "but she got better, and there's something wrong with the Animals. And, oh Glin," she seized both of the other woman's hands, more animated than Emma had yet seen her, "we found Dorthia's tower!"

Emma was starting to feel distinctly like a third wheel at this point. She started to edge carefully away, trying to give the two some space to catch up, but she needn't have bothered. The Good Witch seized on the pronoun.

"We?" she gasped, her gaze falling on Emma as though seeing her for the first time, which was entirely possible, "Oh Elphie, where are my manners? Glinda Upland of the Upper Uplands, Good Witch of the North, delighted to meet you." Glinda offered a hand, bedecked with nails as blisteringly pink as the rest of her.

Emma took it and shook. "Emma Swan," she replied. Even if they left Oz right this minute and went back to Storybrooke, Henry would still have a ball with this story.

"And who's this?" Glinda prompted, turning to the pirate.

"Captain Hook," he answered, "at your service."

The face-breakingly wide smile faltered as her eyes reached the end of his left arm. "Charmed," Glinda managed out, making no movement to offer a handshake.

Emma made a promise to herself then that she would see what she could do about his hand. If magic could dump them across worlds and change the alliance of flying monkeys in the blink of an eye, restoring a hand should be easy. At the very least she could get him a better prosthetic.

Hook seemed used to it, because he tucked the arm out of sight behind his back with ease of long practice. She was probably the only one who caught the flash of a pained smile that flickered across his face, gone as quickly as it had come. He bowed, a proper one only found in storybooks, and Glinda's smile lost a little of its forced nature.

"Glin, can you get us in to see the Wizard?" Elphaba shot out into the ensuing awkward silence, "he needs to know about the Animals, and they want to get home."

"The Wizard is busy-" began the secretary, but Glinda simply steamrolled right over her.

"No he's not, don't be silly," the Good Witch answered, and Emma was beginning to get the feeling that Glinda with her mind made up was something of a force of nature, "we can go right now if you're ready."

Three corridors and several sitting rooms later, the Good Witch had them standing in front of a double door inlaid in glimmering green designs.

She rapped twice, then opened the door enough to poke her head in. "Your Wonderfulness, I've brought some people to see you."

There was a rumbled voice from within, words that Emma didn't quite catch, then Glinda was pushing the door further open and beckoning them through.

Emma had been bracing herself for something like the spectacle hinted at in the movie, and the room beyond the doors did not disappoint. It was a great hall, with high arched ceilings swooping upward, lit in green-tinted squares from the windows set high on the walls.

At the opposite end of the hall, comfortably sprawled at the foot of a dias, was a large reptile. The crocodile glittered in wash of fire, flames edging each scale-edge. She felt more than saw Hook tense beside her and almost reached for him, stopping only because she realized the lunacy of the idea.

"Who are these?" it said in a surprisingly normal voice. "A swordsman, a sorceress, and a lady? Why have you brought them Glinda?"

Emma stepped forward. "Your... Ozness?" she called out tentatively, voice growing in strength when the Good Witch nodded encouragingly. If the story she knew was in any way correct, this was only a front for the Wizard's proper face. He was just a human like her, albeit with a few more tricks, she just had to remember that.

"I was hoping you'd help us get home," she said.

The crocodile turned its head almost lazily, fixing her with small black eyes that stood out like deep pits against the brightness. "You said I," the Wizard observed through his construct, "and then you said we. Which is it?"

"It's my home," Emma snapped back, "but he wants to go there too."

It shook itself, sending sparks glittering from the scales to sizzle out against the stone floor. The scaly belly rasped as it lumbered up to its feet. "Have you a portal, child?"

The effect of the kind words with the burning crocodile was disconcerting, calculatedly so, and Emma found herself replying before she could consider.

"I don't have magic of any kind right now," she replied truthfully.

"Then what is this?" roared the Wizard, and the crocodile turned in on itself to be replaced by a skeleton whose bones were of lightning. It danced a lazy front-handspring, and pointed a crackling finger straight at her when it finished.

Reflexively, she stepped back from it, even as it faded into a swell of water that roiled across the floor toward them. Elphaba took several steps sideways out of the way, but there wasn't time to react before it was swelling into a snake, still translucent as the liquid, scant inches in front of her face.

"This," the Wizard hissed, and the great fangs were snapping down toward her head, pulling out the scrap she'd picked up in Dorthia's tower to tie her hair back.

This was nothing like anything her world had prepared her for, it felt real, not some elaborately crafted illusion by the 'man behind the curtain'. She was close enough to reach out and touch it if she wanted, but her hands stayed firmly glued to her sides. The last thing she wanted was for him to decide the crocodile was necessary again, at this range she would roast.

"How do you have a piece of the first Wizard's balloon?" it hissed.

"There's a lot of old magic in Dorthia's tower," Elphaba offered.

The snake turned its head to look at her. "Sorceress," it greeted, "what would you know of the lost tower?"

"We found it," she replied, voice trembling only slightly, "and I have the flying monkeys under my control."

For an immeasurable moment, it merely looked at her, weighing things Emma had no grasp of, then turned past her to look at Hook. "And you?" it questioned.

"I want to go to Storybrooke," the pirate replied.

"Why, swordsman?" asked the Wizard.

"Because the one whom I want revenge on is there," he answered.

"Honest," praised the Wizard, "misguided, but honest." The great head swung around to look on her again. "And you, lady? What reason do you have to seek my counsel?"

"I need to get back to my family," Emma replied.

Those eyes bored into her, and she shivered, feeling like he was peering straight into her soul and uncovering all her deepest, darkest secrets. She tried to look away, but the orbs held her spellbound. Maybe he had cast a spell over her.

"Glinda," the Wizard ordered, without ever looking away from her, "fetch my Grimmerie."

He turned away at last, and Emma sucked in air, as a breath she hadn't realized she was holding went hurtling out of her. The

"Are you alright?" Hook's voice was close beside her, stirring her hair, and she could feel the warmth of his hand on her shoulder through her jacket.

"I will be," she answered, keeping her eyes on the Wizard. Apparently satisfied with this answer, the hand slid back down her arm and off.

The Wizard had shrunk down to the caricature of a man, still wearing the translucency of water. He was alternately lost in the room, a mere glimmering outline and glowing vibrantly green as he moved in and out of the pockets of light that slanted across the floor.

"Here, your Wonderfulness," Glinda called out as the door opened and shut a third time. The petite blonde was nearly staggering under the weight of a large leather-bound tome that the Wizard took effortlessly, setting it in midair with ease.

"You," he pointed backward, unwaveringly fixed on Hook, "come stand here."

The pirate turned to her. "Off to the gallows with me, it seems," he said, "kiss for luck?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "In your dreams," she shot back.

The smile grew. "That and more, all the time my dear," he assured her, and crossed the room to the spot where the Wizard was waiting.

"How does this work?" Emma asked, turning back to the two behind her.

Glinda was brilliantly crimson, something Elphaba seemed to find hilarious. "Something that has traveled worlds once will remember how to do so," the latter explained, "If you can remind it, you can open another portal."

"That's the gist of it," the Good Witch supplied, "there are a lot of calculations that need to go into these sorts of things in between to get you where you want to go."

The Wizard barked out her name, and the other blonde scurried off to do something.

"Why are you together?" the sorceress asked once the others were out of earshot.

"We're not together!" Emma protested hotly.

Elphaba fixed her with an entirely unimpressed look. "I meant traveling," she clarified.

"I told you, I left him behind. And," she hesitated, not sure whether to reveal this portion, then plowed on anyway, "it's kind of my fault we're in this mess. I owe him."

Elphaba made a humming sort of noise, then stepped in front of her. "All my life, people have called me a freak for how I look," she said lowly, urgently, "Glinda took one look at my skin and judged me."

"Is there a point to this?" Emma asked. They were so close to getting home now, and she was starting to feel impatient.

"So you didn't judge me," the sorceress hurried on, "and by the way you looked like you were about to stab Glinda back there, you don't like people judging him either."

"I'm not saying anything but this," she continued when Emma started to protest, "those who don't judge are few and far between, and you'll hurt him if you start. Take it from someone who knows."

She blinked. The notion that she could _hurt_ him was ludicrous and insane and... as Elphaba moved aside again and she found Hook standing in the center of a circle looking massively uncomfortable, she realized the sorceress was right. They were both damaged, but while her walls just kept people out, his were built of the charm and flirting that he habitually carried around.

"Where did you say you wanted to go?" the Wizard interrupted her reverie.

"Storybrooke," Emma replied, moving forward. She stopped far enough from the circle and its caster that she didn't feel as though she were about to be sucked in.

The land without magic," Hook clarified.

"Do you have magic?" the Wizard asked, directed at her.

"Yes," she blurted out. Even if she couldn't use it just now, it was still there.

The magician leaned down and drew another symbol on the floor. "In then," he ordered, gesturing to the circle.

"Wait!" Glinda called. She hurried around the circle to where Emma was standing, holding something out. "Keep this," said the Good Witch, and Emma found the emerald scrap that supposedly came from the balloon pressed into her hand, "you never when a bit of Oz's magic might come in handy."

She looked so earnest and helpful that she couldn't quite find it in her to refuse. She tucked it away in a pocket, thinking that if this kept up she was going to need more pockets soon.

"Thank you," Emma replied.

Glinda nodded, bright smile beaming, and nodded back. "It was my pleasure," she replied, "a friend of a friend is a friend." She stepped back to stand next to Elphaba, and the two women made a study in opposites; Elphaba tall and severe and dark and green, Glinda petite and bright and colorful and delicate.

"In the circle," ordered the Wizard again. Emma turned and stepped carefully over the glowing lines to where Hook was already standing. Immediately, the pirate looped his arms around her and pulled her closer. To her surprise, it felt familiar, as though they had been in this situation a hundred times. "Not getting away that easily darling," he rumbled into her ear, warm against the whole of her back, "I still have business in your world, after all."

Her blood ran cold at the reminder, and she drummed it deep into the traitorous heart that had started hoping he was sticking around for her. He wasn't here because he wanted to be, he happened to be traveling with her because they were going the same place and he was using her determination to get back to her family. However nice it was to have a constant, she had to remember that.

The Wizard started reading in smooth cadences and measured tones. It sounded like the same language Elphaba had used on the monkeys, but more stately, rolling from one word to the next in booming tones that bounced off either wall and built atop one another until it sounded like a multitude of people were casting rather than one man with a book.

Had she still harbored any misconceptions about the Wizard being a mere charlatan, they were forcefully ripped away in the power of the spell. He had power, and he knew exactly what he was doing with it.

The room rang silent as he spoke, that pressure building again and filling the room to capacity in a whistling roaring rush. The Wizard roared one last line, and the room held perfectly still. Then it swirled down around them, hissing into a thin concentrated stream tinted in jade. The smokey green spirals that worked their way up from floor around their feet, climbing steadily, and Hook pulled her fractionally closer.

"Have a wonderful time!" the Good Witch piped in.

"And if you're ever in Oz again," Elphaba told them as the green swirl started to swallow up the edges of her vision, wicked smile glinting in the light from the spell, "come visit. Glinda hasn't been that scandalized since she walked into the wrong changing room."

Glinda's choked "I was not..." was drowned away as the magic rose up and pulled them under.

* * *

_The heat was stifling, flames licking up at him, and the ceiling creaked ominously. Henry darted backward as far as he could go without running into the fire dancing sadistically around the edge of the room, looking around for the thousandth time, searching desperately for an exit he knew wasn't there._

_The architecture gave another warning creak, and a yelp drove through the heat. For a moment, his mind assumed the sound had come from his own mouth, only to be proven wrong when he found the true source._

_Aurora was standing on the other side of the room, and Henry was so glad to see another human who wasn't his slightly deranged grandmother that he almost threw himself through the danger to hug her. As though it sensed his flare of hope, the fires roared up higher, snatching him round._

_Henry cried out, and when it died, he realized the princess was talking, screaming to be heard over the crackle of the inferno and the groan of the building as it threatened yet again to collapse upon them._

_"-are you?!" she yelled._

_"What?!" the boy called back, straining his ears to pick up her voice. It was like one of the stories in his book, but the stories had never gone into how uncomfortable these things could be._

_"Where are you!?" Aurora repeated._

_"In a house in the woods!" Henry screamed back, "I saw Archie, but it's shielded!"_

_She opened her mouth to say something else_, and then Henry's dream was dashed to pieces all around him by a shrill cry. His first thought, absurdly enough, was _I hope Mom's okay _before he remembered that Regina did not, under any circumstances, emit the kinds of noises he was hearing and that she wasn't here anyway.

His heart sank, and he rolled off the bed as Cora's voice cut into the noise. "Here you are," she announced, "and do stop blubbering." Craning his ears, he caught the peculiar sound that accompanied his captor's vanishes and crept across the floor toward the wall where the noises had died down to terrified sobs.

"Hello?" he ventured, tapping on the wall, "who's there?"

There was a quick gasp, then all noise in the opposite room ceased, as though she was holding her breath.

"I'm Henry," he tried, "what's your name?"

There was a long pause, and then: "I-I don't remember." It was definitely female, with a faint, curious sort of accent. "I remember being on a road in the middle of the forest with-with that woman standing over me, but before that, nothing."

"She must have pushed you over the border," Henry surmised, "that's Cora." He paused, considering adding that she was his grandmother, but decided against it. His fellow captive probably wouldn't take kindly to the information, and it was probably best to leave it alone for now.

"It's nice to know that she has a name," came the reply, "what should we call her?"

Henry laughed. It had been so long since he'd heard someone make a joke that he would have laughed at just about anything right now.

"Can I call you Rose?" he asked, leaning against the wall.

The wood on the other side squeaked as she shifted, and her voice was closer to the wall when she spoke again. "Why?" She sounded much calmer now, not quite so inclined to break into more sobs.

"Because you have thorns," Henry answered, "and your voice is pretty."

It was her turn to laugh, more of a hiccuping chuckle than anything else, but a laugh was a laugh in this place, and needed to be taken as the small victory it was. "Rose it is," she agreed.

* * *

**"Simple, utter, unadulterated loathing" is a reference to What Is This Feeling, another song on the Wicked soundtrack. Specifically, it's Glinda and Elphaba singing.**

**So, we're leaving Oz behind, any guesses as to where our favorite idiots are going next?**

**Review?**


	8. Snicker-Snack

**This was a fun chapter to write, for several reasons. Enjoy.**

**I own exactly none of the things you recognize.  
**

* * *

The swirls of green magic peeled away in wisps and tendrils, unfurling slowly and then faster in thick ribbons that dissipated into the air and slowly revealing their new surroundings. Emma stepped forward, pulling herself out of Hook's grasp, and turned, quickly evaluating their surroundings.

How they always wound up in a forest was beyond her, but this one was decidedly not the Maine woods that ringed the little town. It was too colorful, riots of pink and purple and blue passing for leaves over trunks that were shaded in white and grey.

"Wonderland," Hook groaned, "we're in bloody Wonderland." He looked around, hand rubbing the back of his head.

"We're supposed to be in Storybrooke," Emma said. Oz was nice, it would make a lovely story, but Wonderland was pushing it. She had not signed up for this. "How the hell did we end up in Wonderland?"

"I've not a clue," the pirate shot back, "You're the one with magic Swan."

"It doesn't work," she hissed, "not with this!" She tugged fruitlessly on the metal band encircling her neck, wincing as it rubbed again. She was almost afraid of how it would look when she actually got it off, and it was aching like someone had swirled it around too.

"Bit quieter love," he warned, "and come this way." Without further explanation, he glanced up, then turned on his heel and started off between the trees.

She paused a moment, debating striking it out on her own, but quickly shot that down. She was still more or less unarmed, and he seemed to know where he was going. "Do you even know where we are?" Emma asked when she caught up, just for clarification.

"More or less," Hook answered, completely unhelpful.

Well, that was comforting. "How do you know that?" she pressed.

"I've been here before," he explained, stepping easily over a fallen tree, "a few decades ago, I believe."

He'd thrown the number out so casually, as simply most people would say weeks or months, that it took a moment to actually process.

"A few decades?" she repeated incredulously, not quite sure she had heard him correctly.

"Twenty-eight years, to be exact," he replied, "I was waiting for the curse to break." She ignored the hand he proffered and scrambled up the slight incline on her own, warring with herself whether or not to ask exactly how old he was. She knew he was older than he looked, since he'd spent time in Neverland if the stories had gotten anything right, but she wasn't sure she wanted to know exactly how much older. There was weird and then there was fairytales-are-real and then beyond that there was knowing that the pirate next to her was whatever-number-of-decades/centuries/whatever-old. 

They hiked in silence for a while, the quiet allowing her time to marvel at the woods. As places to be stranded went, Wonderland didn't seem so bad thus far. It was extraordinarily colorful, and nothing had tried to kill them.

Yet.

She snorted at her own internal musings. Emma Swan of a year or even three months ago would never have listed nothing's-tried-to-kill-me as a top criteria for how likable a place was, but then ogres had a funny way of changing one's mind about things very rapidly.

"Something funny, intruders?" said a far too cheerful voice.

Emma whirled on the spot, wishing desperately that she was armed in some way other than with her fists, and found... Nothing.

The woods were empty of any other inhabitants save Hook, who looked as startled as she was. Besides, she realized as her conscious mind caught up with what she had already realized, it hadn't sounded like him.

"I'm up here, you know," her gaze drifted up the nearest tree, following the source, and rested on a housecat, closer to the size of a larger dog than a proper cat, long fur in a shocking shade of of purple that nearly blended into the leaves behind it. The strangest thing about it was not its fur though, but the wide toothy grin that stretched its face nearly in two.

"You really out to get your head examined," it continued, neatly tucking a paw under itself, "you'll not last long here with it screwed on straight."

"You're the Cheshire Cat," Emma said.

"Only occasionally," it replied, "the rest of the time, I find it quite dreary."

"Tell me," Hook called up, "does the Queen of Hearts still rule here?" He sounded apprehensive, and Emma shot him a questioning look. He shook his head in a way she understood meant _not now_ rather than _don't ask_, and she fixed her attention back on the animal.

The Cat licked a paw thoughtfully, and looked mortally offended. "There is always a Queen of Hearts ruling," it said deliberately, "Except of course when there isn't. But the Queen is not _here_. _I_ am here, and _I_ cannot have my head chopped off."

That made about as much sense as she'd expected, but if the Cheshire Cat was real, perhaps some of the other things she'd read about Wonderland were as well. "Do you know the White Rabbit?" Emma asked it, ignoring "Or the Dormouse?" The Rabbit might know a way home, and the Dormouse was the only other benign inhabitant of Wonderland she could remember at the moment.

"Oh, yes," it said.

"Which one?" the pirate demanded after the silence had stretched on for long enough that it became apparent that the Cat was not intending to continue.

"The White Rabbit," it replied, as though it had never stopped, "he was a lovely fellow, mad about time. I used to try to eat him weekly. Until the Queen got to him, that is." The whole thing was reported in the same bright tone as entire conversation had been conducted. "He never was the same after that."

"And do remember," it continued blithely, before either of them could format a response, "that things we do not wish harmed are best kept in those things that _are_ not."

With that bit of confusion, it began to fade away, growing less and less distinct until it was hardly even an outline. true to form though, the last thing to disappear was the brilliantly white grin, until she blinked and that was gone too.

"That," she began.

"By the way," interrupted the place where the Cat had been, "You should talk to the birds about that problem. Collars are only for prisoners and dogs, though often I believe those are the same things. That is all."

"-was bloody confusing?" Hook finished for her, "That was actually quite sane for it, I'm led to believe."

Emma scoffed. The idea that something could be more nonsensical than what they had just experienced was slightly crazy, but then she was starting to understand this whole world was slightly crazy. "Is everything in this place mad?" she asked him, not really expecting an answer.

"Perhaps," Hook admitted softly, "or perhaps it's us who are mad."

She didn't particularly want to consider that, so she turned away and pushed through the foliage again. "So how do you know the Queen of Hearts?"

"I was sent to kill her," Hook replied lightly, falling into step beside her. She followed as he veered slightly to one side, following whatever invisible directions he was following.

"It's not had much of a choice," he protested when she looked at him disbelievingly, "Regina was quite determined that I should bring her mother's body back."

"Wait," she snagged out a hand, catching his arm and forcing him to do just that while she processed that. Regina was the daughter of... "Cora is the Queen of Hearts?"

"Yes," the pirate replied.

Somehow, through everything she wanted to ask, only one question actually made it out. "Does she really do the whole off-with-your-head thing?"

Hook chuckled. "Not that I'm aware of, darling, she's rather more fond of hearts" he winked at her, "but don't worry, I told you, you've got me to protect you."

She was about to bite back a comment when he froze, head tipped to one side, listening hard. "Hook-" she began, and he whirled on her, slamming a hand over her mouth to muffle her. She struggled, but he held her tight, crushing her bodily to him to restrain her.

"Swan, be quiet," he hissed in her ear.

Seething, she did so. The old children's trick of licking his hand would probably only result in more suggestive comments, and she couldn't quite get a good angle to kick him. But as she was forced to be silent, what he had picked up became apparent. It was a curious whistling sort of sound, accompanied at intervals with a noise that could only be described as burbling.

As her eyes widened, he let up the pressure over her mouth. She nodded, and he released her completely. How long they stood there, not moving, barely breathing, she couldn't say, but the whistling grew louder and softer by turns, until the source came into sight over a ridge.

It resembled a smaller sort of dragon in its reptilian body and tail and the leathery wings. That, though, was where the resemblance ended. Antennae sprang up from the round head, perched atop a swaying snake-like neck. Abnormally long fingers, tipped in razor sharp claws, ended slender arms, while the back legs upon which the creature moved terminated in stocky feet with blunt toes.

"What is that?" Emma asked, hardly more than a whisper.

"Jabberwock," Hook breathed.

The head swung round, and the eyes fixed upon them so directly it couldn't possibly have missed they were there. The burbling rose to an unearthly shriek and in a bound the jabberwock was looming toward them.

"Run."

The command was unnecessary, Emma was already wheeling in the opposite direction and sprinting as fast as her legs would take her. Another shriek sounded behind her, and a series of dull thuds as it churned its wings in the air. She dared a glance behind her and found it bearing down on her. Claws snatched at her, catching the back of her jacket and tearing through, and she threw herself down to avoid it.

She heard Hook yell, and was acting on it before she even fully processed what he was saying, rolling sideways in time to miss being impaled by those overly long clawed fingers. She scrambled away in an undignified crabwalk, not even bothering to get to her feet, and paid the price when her back hit a tree seconds later.

The jabberwock loomed over her, feet back on the ground now, for all the good that did her; claws and teeth too close for any measure of comfort. It reached for her slowly, as though it realized she had no space to run and wanted to drag this out.

And this was it, she was going to die here in Wonderland, backed into a tree by a creature that had somehow escaped the page of poetry where it belonged, never see Henry or her family again.

"Hey!" Hook shouted, and something cracked into the creature's head, jerking it sideways from the force of it.

Emma groped around her on the ground for a weapon, and her fingers found a branch that had fallen. She cracked it across her knee as the jabberwock twisted to find the source of the noise and surged to her feet, jamming the broken point up under the chin with all the force she could conjure up. Blood trickled out over her hands, thick and black and disgustingly oozy.

It keened, the sound sharp against her eardrums, and Emma dove out of the way as it flailed at her, sending the stick flying along with more droplets of the oily blood. A second, louder screech made her grab for her ears, but it was accompanied by a heavy thud. She turned, brandishing the other half of the branch, to find the creature laid out on the ground.

Her gaze ran up the twitching body and encountered Hook, wild grin stretching his face as he ripped his hook free from the Jabberwock's head, and the branch fell from fingers she hardly noticed had loosened around it.

In three steps, she crossed the distance between them and swallowed up any protests he might have made, though judging by the way he immediately reacted, there wouldn't have been any. He kissed her back just as fiercely as she was kissing him.

The situation could not be less ideal, there was a dead Jabberwock not five feet away and both of them were spattered in blood and things she didn't even want to think about, but as his fingers skimmed past her face and curled into her hair and the other arm pulled her closer, she found her heartbeat settling down from its erratic jumping into a too-fast thrumming. Later, she would tell herself that it was just relief at still being alive, just the adrenaline, but at that moment, being here with him just now, it felt _real_ and _right_ in a way that very little had since they'd fallen through the first portal.

"I have to say," he said when they had to come up for air, "When I told you not to stand on ceremony, I didn't actually think you'd take me up on it."

The words washed over her like a bucket of ice water, bringing reality flooding back. She yanked herself away, abruptly remembering that this was a pirate and a Bad Idea. When had she become comfortable enough with him to forget that?

"That meant nothing," she told him, attempting to even out her breathing and settle her pulse. There was a portion of her that wondered who she was trying to convince.

_Him_, she told it, and locked it away.

"You can't run from everyone forever," he said, and it sounded like a warning, or maybe a promise, "you're going to have to stop someday."

"Watch me," she replied.

She didn't want to look at him, but she did anyway, needing to see his reaction. Everyone always caved when they found out exactly how high her walls went, sat down and gave up or turned aside to someone who wasn't quite so guarded. But he had something fierce and determined glinting in his eyes, and she experienced a brief flare of something like anticipation.

"I'm not Neal, Emma," of all the responses he might have given, she wasn't expecting that one. It was quiet, so much so that if the woods hadn't fallen silent in the wake of the Jabberwock she might have missed it, and gentle across her name. Perhaps she was supposed to miss it.

"I know," she answered, hating how weak it sounded but not knowing how to respond otherwise. "But it still meant nothing," she tacked on.

He looked at her, just looked, and she had to fight not to turn away, because in that moment she felt like the open book he claimed she was. Finally, he nodded. "Very well."

She was saved from having to respond to that by another voice. "What in the name of the Suits are you doing in Tulgey Wood?" She turned, almost expecting another of Wonderland's fantastical creatures to have found them, but it was only a man, blunt-featured and sturdily built, wearing a uniform of grey and holding a sword.

"What do people usually do in Tulgey Wood?" Hook replied, glibly sliding back into the cocky pirate. Emma rolled her eyes at him, but he only cocked an eyebrow back.

The soldier, for he could be nothing else with that uniform and that bearing, looked between them and the dead Jabberwock. "Usually, they die," he responded curtly, "count yourselves, lucky. You're the exception."

He looked back up and shifted awkwardly, as though not quite sure what to do with himself. "Come on, I'll get you out of here," he said.

Emma didn't move, and she was somewhat gratified to realize that Hook didn't make any motion either. "Why should we trust you?" she demanded, "you might be leading us straight to another of those things."

The soldier straightened his posture. "I know where I'm going," he replied, "and Tulgey Wood if not a place you want to stay long in."

"If it's so dangerous, what were you doing here mate?" Hook questioned.

"Following the Cheshire Cat," he snapped, "now are you going to come with me or do I have to get a cut of soldiers to come get you?"

"There are two of us," the pirate observed in a tone low enough that the Wonderlander couldn't hear, "If it comes to that, we can overpower him. If he's telling the truth, we get out of these woods; if he turns on us, we clock him over the head and leave him to the Jabberwocky."

Emma pondered it for a few seconds, until the soldier started getting antsy. How screwed up was her life, that _Captain Hook_ was someone she actually might trust? At least, enough to let him make a plan for getting out of sticky spots. She nodded and took a step toward the soldier.

He didn't ask for further assent, whirling on his heel and marching into the woods in a quick step that had her moving briskly to keep up.

"I don't believe I caught your name," the pirate called out.

"General Dodge of Clubs," the man replied without looking back or breaking stride, "leader of Wonderland's Resistance."

"Resistance of what?" Emma asked.

He stopped and turned to face them, still standing in military from. "The current Queen of Hearts," Dodge said with the air of something that has been said many times, "we strive to end her reign of terror and put the rightful monarchs back on the throne."

"I'm sorry," the blonde replied, somewhat awkwardly, "about your queen."

Dodge resumed his forward progress. "Feel sorry if we fail," he answered shortly.

He turned aside from the path he'd been following and took seven steps out, then wheeled around and came two steps back. Dodge tapped the mushroom that had sprung up from the ground there and peeled the top back, revealing a hole into the earth.

"Well," he asked over his shoulder, "Are you coming?"

"I did not sign up for this," Emma grumbled. All she wanted was to go home and see her son again, not be dragged around freaking Wonderland in some attempt to resist the Queen of Hearts; but then her life didn't seem inclined lately to ask what she wanted.

Besides, she thought she might have inherited some sort of hero-gene from her parents, because she found she couldn't in good conscience turn away from the tunnel.

"Down the rabbit hole it is," she sighed, and swung her body down into the tunnel, pausing on the edge to look back at him.

"You coming?" she asked.

"If you're volunteering to make me, I won't put up any complaints," he replied easily.

At another time, she might have fished up something equally suggestive from the stash her mind had started creating, but with his kiss still burning on her lips, it seemed too serious. Instead, she looked down and pushed forward, dropping down the tunnel out of sight.

* * *

"I don't like this," Mulan said, turning around to pace another length of the room, "She had almost stopped having the nightmares."

She moved as though she was going to sit on the edge of the couch, then thought better of it and remained standing, looking down at the princess whimpering slightly in her sleep. The golden gleam of the compass showed between Aurora's fingers, clasped close to her breast as though to ward off the horrors of that netherworld.

"I wouldn't have asked if it wasn't necessary," Snow assured her from where she was standing a ways away, "Charming already stopped and Aurora was the most familiar with Henry in that place."

"I still don't like it." Mulan gave into the urge to comfort the other female and crouched next to the makeshift bed, reaching out a hand to stroke the chocolate curls. Aurora looked different in this world's clothing, less of the little lost princess she had first taken her for and more of the capable yet breakable woman she knew her to be.

"Neither do I," Snow said, "but it's been a week. Regina can't find the house, and Red's wolves haven't turned up anything."

"Did you consider asking the Dark One?" Mulan asked. She knew the answer, but her charge was in another world where she couldn't protect her and it made her short-tempered. She quickly soothed her tone over when Aurora whimpered and twitched restlessly, humming soothing nonsense as she stroked the other female's hair.

"She trusts you," there was an edge of longing in the queen's voice, and even without turning around, Mulan could imagine the wistfulness in Snow's face. The queen missed her daughter, and seeing Aurora so defenseless reminded her of the years she had missed. Perhaps Mulan was selfish, but she couldn't imagine putting Aurora through that.

"I am her guardian," the warrior said simply, "I could not protect her if she did not trust me."

"Do you want something?" Snow asked abruptly, "water, hot chocolate?"

She would never admit it, but she had developed something of a sweet tooth since coming to this world. Mulan glanced back, then straightened up.

"Will you stay with her?" she asked hesitantly. Mothers needed to mother, she understood that, even if something inside her rebelled at trusting Aurora to another's care. She brushed it off. Snow had proven herself more than capable in the Enchanted Forest, and preparing drinks, especially with this realm's shortcuts, was well within her skill-set.

Snow nodded and took her place while Mulan went into the kitchen. She found three mugs, filled them with water and set them to heat.

She was just taking the last of them out of the device called a microwave when a scream broke out from the other room. She almost broke one of the mugs in her haste to round the counter. Snow moved back, and she settled next to the princess, drawing her into an embrace.

"You're back," was all she said. It was all she needed to say. Meaningless platitudes would not make Aurora feel any safer.

"He's in the woods," the princess said when she had stopped shaking, not even making any motion to push Mulan away, "he said he saw Archie, but it's shielded."

The white queen was already pulling her phone out. "I'll call Archie and get him to go over his route with Red."

"I never want to go back there," Aurora pled, hiding her face in the side of the warrior's neck.

"You won't," she swore, meeting Snow's eyes. Though she had been taught in training not to make promises she couldn't keep, she meant this one. Aurora would not go back if she could do anything about it.

* * *

**The Cat was fun, and some of what it said is important. The rest is, of course, sheer nonsense.  
**

**Reviews are to the plot bunnies what huzzah-we're-alive kisses are to Hook and Emma. More of one might prompt more of the other.  
**


	9. Keeper of the Keys

**This was supposed to be out earlier, but I had most of the chapter written, and then my computer malfunctioned and then I had practically nothing and got to rewrite it. *hysterical laughter* Anyway, enjoy the chapter.  
**

**Some elements in here are borrowed from The Looking Glass Wars. Emma Swan and all her cohorts belong to Adam and Eddy. Everything else comes from the deep dark depths of my mind.**

* * *

The tunnel dead-ended at a door that was already conveniently hanging open. Emma went skidding straight out the door and slid across brightly polished floors to come to a stop partway down a hallway. She stood up, brushed herself off, and stepped sideways when Hook came slipping out the door after her.

One side of the hallway they'd landed in was broken at intervals by doors, while the other was made up almost entirely of large windows. She turned, expecting artificial light, or perhaps an underground cavern, but she was met instead with an impossible landscape. They were above a city, bustling with life, with a cloudy sky above and no trace of the fantastically colored woods they'd just left.

"But, we went down," Emma protested.

"Yes," Dodge replied simply, "and we wound up here."

"It's Wonderland, darling," Hook said as they followed the Club down the hallway, "reality is just as malleable here as time is in Neverland."

"What?" she asked, not certain she'd heard him correctly.

"There are people," the pirate explained, lowering his voice, "who can shape this land into whatever form they like. I had the _distinct_ pleasure of meeting a few of them last time I was here." It hadn't been a pleasant meeting, from the sound of things.

That was rather disconcerting, to consider- down was supposed to be down, not up or sideways. "Cora..." she began, but Hook seemed to read her mind.

"Luckily, Cora is not one of them," he assured her.

"It's because she's not the rightful Queen," Dodge said, comfortable as if he'd been invited, "Spades use magic, some Diamonds can, and the proper Queen could."

"Who's the proper Queen?" Emma asked him, and since he seemed to be in a sharing mood, she continued, "What are you going to do if you take down Cora? Why did you induct us into this revolution so quickly?"

The general paused with his hand on a door. "You don't know what you're doing, but you killed a jabberwock with nothing but a stick and a hook and your own wits," he answered, "Even if it was nothing but luck, we could use that kind of luck."

He pushed the door open to reveal a bright, spacious room. It looked like an enormous aerie, with high vaulted ceilings and trees that shone in jeweled colors. There were bird-like creatures of varying sizes fluttering around, and when Emma lifted a hand one of them, a hummingbird with bright scarlet plumage, settled on her finger. It cocked its head at her, making the jewel at the base of its throat catch the light, before lifting off again.

"Lady Diamond?" Dodge called.

In a flash of turquoise, one of the birds settled on his shoulder. It was larger than the other, looking more like a pigeon than anything else.

"In the circle, General," said a female voice. But it wasn't the bird talking, Emma realized, the voice was coming from the gem hanging around the bird's neck.

Dodge turned and marched into the foliage, continuing over his shoulder. "You're going to help us because you're lost in this world."

"Speak for yourself," Hook grumbled.

"Really?" the general challenged, wheeling around to face them. "How do you get to the Maze? What do you say in greeting to a caterpillar? Do you know how to mirror-jump?"

When neither of them could reply under the barrage of questions, he turned forward again. "That's what I thought. You'll help because it gives you a chance to get acquainted with Wonderland as much as it gives us more assets, something we need right now."

"Do you know any of those things?" Emma asked the pirate in an undertone.

"I've heard of the Maze," he replied.

The Club pushed back a branch and they emerged onto a stone circle, the surface smooth and polished in contrast with the gravel that lined the paths they'd been on. There was a woman in a white dress, copper waves down her back, sitting cross-legged in the center, intent on something in front of her.

"I brought new recruits," Dodge greeted.

"I'll be there in a minute," she replied. She glanced back over her shoulder for an instant, and turned back before whirling around again. "Alyss!?" she burst out, desperately hopeful.

Emma looked at Hook, who shrugged, then at Dodge, attempting to compel him to answer. "The rightful Queen of Wonderland is Alyss of Hearts," he said, "and if she is somehow dead, the King and the Princess escaped."

"So where are they?" Hook questioned.

"No one knows," the woman got to her feet, "my apologies lady. At a glance, you could pass for Alyss, especially wearing Heart red."

Another bird, this one glinting in every shade of amethyst, settled onto her shoulder, preening itself importantly, and the redhead reached up to idly stroke it for a moment before it lifted off her shoulder and flew away again. Emma watched it go, turning over an idea.

"The Cheshire Cat said I should ask the birds about my problem," she burst out, "but I think it meant you."

"The Cat usually knows what its talking about," the woman commented. Amusement played in the corners of her mouth and her tone gained a light, teasing inflection as she continued. "It gave you the slip again, didn't it?"

A stone statue would have had more reaction than the Club did, and the woman sighed the sigh of the long-suffering. "No doubt Dodge has completely mislaid his manners again," she said to Emma, "I am Lady Robyn of Diamonds."

"Captain Hook, Emma Swan," Emma introduced, since Hook was stealthily creeping his way toward a group of crystallinely yellow birds and didn't seem inclined to do so.

She dropped a slight curtsy. "Now, you mentioned a problem?"

Emma lifted her chin, exposing the collar. "It blocks magic," she explained, working a finger along the edge the metal band. That was getting to be almost a habit now.

Robyn came closer, hesitating for permission before she actually touched anything, and Emma found herself liking the women a little more for it. "Powerful," the Diamond remarked, tapping the metal, "but not of Wonderland make."

There was a design in the center of the paved clearing, the suits for cards enlaid into a circle, that Emma busied herself examining to pass the time. The Heart was a fiery scarlet, the Spade opposite it fathomless black, while the Club and the Diamond on either side were smokey grey and brilliant white. Well, that made Robyn's comment about Heart red make sense. Idly, she wondered what color they wore for weddings.

"Don't you dare," the lady called, snapping Emma out of her reverie. She thought for a moment that the sharp tone was directed at her, but then she realized Hook had been watching one of the birds for longer than could possibly be innocent if he wasn't intending on catching it. "I will know if a single one of my keys goes missing."

"These are keys?" Hook asked, looking at the bird with new eyes.

"Yes, they are," the Diamond replied, moving around to examine the back of the collar.

"What do they unlock?" Emma wondered aloud, peering around with new eyes.

"Everything that needs it," answered Robyn sharply, "now hold still or I _will_ get the roc to sit on you."

Though the threat was foreign, the inflection left nothing to be wondered about, and Emma consented to stand still and watch Hook attempt to looked like he wasn't thinking about how to catch one of the birds while the Lady of Diamonds concluded her examination.

After a few more minutes of tapping and muttering, the redhead stepped back, brought two fingers to her lips and let loose a shrill whistle. She extended an arm in the manner of a falconer waiting for her bird to return, and the blonde was surprised when a silver-feathered hummingbird alighted there instead.

With her free hand, Robyn lifted the diamond from the bird. The avian hopped up to her shoulder and settled there, preening itself importantly in a satisfied manner while she did something to the gem. It split in her fingers into miniature diamonds rolling about her palm.

"There's good news and there's bad news," Robyn began.

"Can you get it off?" Emma interrupted.

"That's the good news," the Diamond continued, "the bad news is that it will need to come off slowly so you aren't overwhelmed."

"How long?" she asked, mind already jumping to worst case scenarios.

"Optimally, a week," was the reply, and Emma let herself relax. "We can start now, if you like," she continued, holding up one of the gems. When the blonde nodded, it was pressed up to the metal.

She could feel it loosen its hold just slightly, and took a grateful breath. It was amazing to be able to do so without metal pressing against her skin the whole way.

"Thank you," she said, the words slightly odd in her mouth. She hadn't had a lot of occasion to say them in the life she'd led.

Robyn smiled warmly. "You're welcome," she replied. There was a pause and then, "Whatever you did to get Dodge to accept you so quickly, it must have been impressive." The lady touched her shoulder lightly. "If you decide to help, we could use impressive."

Leaving Emma to chew on that statement, the Diamond made her way to where Dodge seemed to be becoming one with the foilage. He lifted one of the branches, and she drew him off down one of the paths, and before she had realized it, she was alone with Hook again.

"What will you do with one if you catch it?" she asked him. The pirate didn't startle when she spoke, turning to her with that rakish grin firmly in place.

"I'd can think of a few things I'd like to unlock," he said.

Emma almost groaned, or smiled, she wasn't sure which would be worse, so she settled on rolling her eyes. "Do you ever stop?"

"Never," the pirate assured her.

Well, at least he was consistent. Emma ignored that statement, pressing onto the topic that Robyn and Dodge were no doubt discussing. "What are you going to do?"

"As a general rule," he said, turning serious, "I actively try to avoid revolutions. They tend to involve a lot of collateral damage. Tends to put a damper on surviving."

"What about you?" he turned the question back on her, leaning against a tree to face her, "you've your lad to get back to."

"I know that," she shot back, "but Henry..." she hesitated, unsure of how to say this. "Henry believes that Good always wins and that Evil needs to be vanquished. I'm not sure how I could look him in the eye knowing I passed up the chance to make that happen."

"I think he'd be rather more keen on having you alive than a hero," Hook answered.

Emma moved around to where one of the birds was picking at a tree. She stretched out a hand and it hopped on, bright black eyes glinting as it tipped its head at her. "They would," she agreed, meaning all of her family now, "but they'd also want me to do the right thing."

His face entirely inscrutable when she looked back up at him. "You'll be fighting then?" he asked.

"I don't know," she admitted. She was tired of fighting, she just wanted to go home and curl up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and Henry and laugh at how wrong the Disney movies got everything.

A simple movement encouraged the bird to fly off. There were times she wished that she could do that, just fly away from everything and somehow wind up in that place called home that was more magical than any amount of enchanted land ever could be.

"I don't know," she repeated, softer.

"I see," Hook replied. She was coming to depend on him understanding, it was going to be something of a culture shock to be around people day after day who didn't understand exactly what she was trying to say.

For a moment, no one said anything, and then the comfortable silence was broken by a throat being cleared. "I think there's something you need to see," Robyn said.

It was the general though, who lead her silently through the halls until they wound up in front of a large mirror. Without breaking stride, he stepped through, and Emma cautiously followed him.

It felt curiously like having stepped through a shower of cool water, and she had to shake herself on the other side to get rid of the sensation of being wet. Emma opened her mouth to ask what she was supposed to see, looked up, and the words died.

The hallway they had stepped into was black stone rather than the white, lit by steady blue lights, but that wasn't what had stopped her voice.

It had been destroyed. Chunks of stone shattered out of the walls and floor, gouges scratched across every conceivable surface, burns marks in a myriad of colors. A fine layer of ash coated the floor, collecting in the corners and under rubble, and the whole place had a still air, as though no one had dared to tread here for a long time. It felt almost like a graveyard.

"What happened here?" Emma asked. She stepped forward and bent down to swipe up a handful of the ash that had piled up against a fallen chunk of pillar, letting it sift through her fingers.

"This is where the Spades made their final stand," Dodge answered quietly, "when Cora came, the magicians stood against her dark arts, and for a time we thought they could drive her down. For their perseverance, she _crushed_ them. Only remnants of that House remain, completely under her thrall, and the King of Spades vanished along with Queen Alyss."

"Don't you see?" he continued when she didn't reply, "this is why we have to overthrow her. Wonderland needs its rightful rulers."

Emma nodded slowly, letting the dust trickle through her fingers. This might just be someone's heart on the floor, and it was that realization that made up her mind. She was going to see this through, see Cora de-throned, then she could work on getting back to her family. Maybe it was that hero-gene acting up, but she was going to do this. "Yes," she said, then again, gaining volume and determination, "Yes. Let's have that coup."

"Now that," said the man who'd just stepped out of a mirror, almost pleasantly, "is treason."

* * *

They were all talking over each other. Gold stopped just out of sight and leaned on his cane, listening in. They weren't going to get anything accomplished and it had never hurt him to go in knowing more than the other parties thought he did.

But then this was different than any other deal he'd ever made, this was Belle's life on the line. He took another breath, hesitating a moment longer

Just then, a extraordinarily large wolf nosed open the station doors and let herself in.

"Miss Lucas," he greeted. He had learned long ago how shield any surprise he felt from prying eyes.

She reared back on her hind legs, tugging at the red cloak. It cascaded down across her back, and the human stood up, fastening it close about her throat.

"Gold," she returned, "what do you want?" She didn't fear him nearly as much as some, secure in the protection her other shape provided. She'd come a long way from the shy little thing her grandmother had brought to him, pleading for something to stop the changing.

"Only the same thing that you want dearie," he answered.

Her eyes flashed golden, but she try to stop him as he followed after her into the sheriff's station. After Henry's disappearance, it had become the base of operations for the boy's family. Snow, James, and Regina were already in there, bent over a map of Storybrooke with lines scribbled on it.

"Red," the prince greeted, completely ignoring him, "did your wolves find anything?"

"You would not believe how much easier the search goes when you can directly talk to them," the wolf-girl commented. She leaned over and peered closely at the map for a moment, before circling a point with her finger. "They're catching something in this area," she told them, "but after that the trail goes cold."

"I can help with that," Gold volunteered.

"You?" Regina scoffed, "why would you help us?"

Rumplestiltskin looked at her, almost pitying. There were times he thought it might have been better if he had taken her from Cora. While growing up with a heartless mother had crafted her into a far better mage than any teachings he could have applied, it had also warped her.

"Cora has Belle," he snarled out, "Hence, my interest. I taught her," among other things, "I can find her magic."

Snow, showing an excellent appreciation for the timing of things, piped in. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go. I'd like my grandson to be home by tonight."

Regina paused in the act of rolling up the map. "I just realized," she began in wondering tones, "You are technically my stepdaughter, and Henry is your grandson, with makes-"

"I try not to think about that," Snow interrupted quickly. She slung her bow over her shoulder, tightened the strap, and left the rest of them to keep up the best they could.

* * *

**Don't you just love those awkward moments when you realize your grandson is also your step-brother? Once has the most twisted family trees ever.  
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**Feed the plot bunnies?  
**


	10. Heart of the Mater

******I'm going to have no internet for a while, so I wanted to get this up before then. **

**One of the things I keep running into while writing this is that the characters keep having backstories. To that end, I'm thinking of starting a collection of 'extra' scenes that didn't make it into this. Would anybody actually like to see that or should I keep my headcanons to myself?  
**

**I own nothing. Enjoy.  
**

* * *

There were people in the house. Henry heard boots stomping up the stairs, indistinct voices raised in shouting, and lots of banging and crashing and tramping as they intruded, coming closer and closer.

He leapt to his feet, half-expecting Cora to intrude and whisk him away, but the noise simply crashed into Rose's room. There were muffled voices, then her voice raised in a terrified shriek.

"Who's Belle?" she sobbed. There were thumps and thuds like something had fallen over and Henry couldn't keep silent.

"Rose!" he called, banging on the wall, "Rose, what's happening?"

"Get off me!" she screamed, "get out!" There were more voices, a sharp exclamation of pain.

"Henry?"

He hadn't noticed the door opening, Cora's lock finally giving way, until Snow spoke. The boy ran into his grandmother's arms, holding on as though he never intended to let go. She returned the hug full force, bow pressing into his back as she squeezed him. "What's happening?" he asked anxiously, the words tumbling over each other, "why's Rose screaming? Where's Pops and my mom? What happened to Cora?"

Snow pulled him out into the hallway for answer, and there was James holding a sword just like in the books, and Red in her rich crimson cloak, but his mom was there, and Henry immediately launched himself at her. Regina pulled him into a tight hug and for a moment he was content not to move, but then he had to know, so he pulled back enough to say "Rose!?"

"Rose?" Regina repeated, brow furrowing in confusion.

The door to the room next to his banged open and a woman with disheveled chocolate curls came flying out. She glanced across them all and then swiftly hid behind Ruby, using the wolf-girl as a shield, as Gold came limping out, clinging to the doorframe for support.

"Belle," he pleaded, stretching out a hand as though he could cross the distance between them with just that.

"That's not my name!" she protested. That was Rose's voice. That was Rose.

"How sweet," cooed Cora. Henry had been so wrapped in seeing everyone, in finally learning what his friend on the other side of the wall looked like that he hadn't heard the whoosh that accompanied her appearances. In a rustle of fabric, the cloak dropped to the ground and a giant wolf pounced with savage intent. Cora merely flicked her wrist and the lupine crashed against and through the wall into the room that had been his cell.

The undefended Rose rose into the air, grasping at her throat, and Gold stopped dead in his tracks, magic dying across his fingertips

"Daughter, look how weak they are. Join with me, and we can take them easily." She held out a hand expectantly, not an ounce of apprehension on her face. She was certain Regina would take her up on this offer.

"No Mother," Regina growled. She drew herself up and placed herself between him and the witch while Henry was still trying to process everything.

Green light lanced out from the dark queen's fingertips, shooting haphazardly across the room to arc into Cora. She simply laughed, and Regina cut the magic as quickly as it had begun when Rose began to wheeze and Gold shouted a warning.

"You foolish girl," she chided, sounding not even winded, "You can't kill the heartless. You can't win this."

Cora raised a hand, glowing black, and as Charming moved in front of Snow, tightening his grip on the sword, Henry shut his eyes and prayed for a miracle. There was no more True Love to save them, no wild card to play, no aid from Gold, only a sword against a foe who was seemingly unkillable. For the first time, it seemed like good could lose.

Cora's back arched and the magic in her hand winked out like a birthday candle. She blinked once, genuine surprise playing across her face, and collapsed.

For a moment, no one dared to breathe, waiting for the other shoe to drop and the woman who had, in truth, been the root of all their troubles to get up and wreck more havoc. There was nothing but Rose's gasps and Red's small whimpers, and finally the stillness was broken as James moved slowly forward to crouch next to Cora.

The king took her wrist gingerly as though she was an armed bomb and felt for a pulse. After a few moments, he looked up at Regina. "She's dead," he told her, sounding more surprised than relieved or triumphant. "I'm sorry."

Regina's expression was somewhere between relief and sorrow, but her clipped tones were unchanged as she knelt next to the corpse long enough to close Cora's eyes. "My mother was the source of a lot of pain," she told him, "including mine, but I appreciate your condolences."

Wordlessly, Henry came up next to her and wrapped his arms around his mother. "How'd she die?" he asked.

Regina put one arm around his shoulders. He could feel the grief in the tension of her fingers on his shoulder and knew she would mourn later, when people were not looking and she could be weak. "I don't know."

* * *

**Earlier**

The man who'd spoken was wiry, with dark hair nearly to his shoulders and chillingly blue eyes framed in cold features. He wore Spade black, and the cut of these clothes was far better than anyone else she'd seen thus far. But for all the elegance of his dress, he had a distasteful, almost bored, expression that ruined any good looks he might have had.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Jack," Dodge filled in, "Lord of Spades, Cora's Proxy, and a traitor."

The Spade pretended to think for a moment, then twirled a hand in an exaggerated gesture. "No," he replied blithely, "that would be you."

Dodge drew his sword and slashed at Jack, which the Spade neatly ducked. He steepled his fingers and then drew them apart, a single glowing blue line strung between his palms. It straightened, and he whirled it around in a blow Dodge parried. They fought back and forth in a blur of steel and magic, until Jack evidently tired of this. The bar went flexible again for just long to twist the ends to meet, Dodge's sword in the middle. He yanked the loop sideways, and pressed a hand into the general's throat.

The sword clattered against the floor as Dodge went rigid, frozen and horrified.

Emma had seen quite enough, she picked up a nearby chunk of rubble that would make a convenient beating implement. "Hey!" she called.

Slowly, he turned to face her. A horrible smile stretched across his face, cruelty in the corners, and he opened his fingers and let Dodge droop to the ground, advancing on her with predatory intent. She was abruptly rethinking this plan.

"Who are you?" he purred, stopping a few feet from her and starting a slow circle. A creep, wonderful. Thankfully, she'd been dealing with creeps long enough that this was right up her alley.

Emma dropped long enough to swing his legs out from under him and took off in the opposite direction while he was incapacitated. Whatever he'd pulled out of thin air looked suspiciously like a lightsaber and she didn't want to stick around long enough to find out if it cut like one.

She made it only around the next corner before Jack appeared in the hallway directly in front of her, stepping out of a mirror with only a ripple across the surface of the looking glass. "Why do they always run?" he asked no one in particular as she barreled straight into him.

Those arms came up around her with deceptive strength, holding her firmly far too close to that smug grin.

Jack's face changed as his eyes dropped to her neck, seemingly unaffected by her struggles to get free. "What's this?" he asked, and his long fingers came up to pluck at something on the collar. She knew before he even held it up what it was by the way the collar ratcheted tight again. He was holding the tiny gem Robyn had affixed to the metal.

The Spade tucked it away into a pocket, and Emma took advantage of the fact he had incapacitated one hand. She slammed the rock-weighted hand into his nose as she stomped down on his foot, and made a break for it, back the way she'd come, while he was howling in pain.

Dodge was still slumped over, so she worked his arm over her shoulders and half-carried, half-supported him back through the first mirror they'd come through.

"What did he do to you?" she asked.

"Magic," the general panted, "get back to Robyn. Can't follow us back here."

Emma focused on remembering the twists that had brought them to this spot and keeping Dodge from plummeting to the floor. "What's his problem?" she questioned, more in an attempt to keep the Club talking than out of a desire to know, "girl troubles?"

"Something like that," he huffed. He was trying to take more of his weight now, which she judged as a good sign. "Spades haven't been a favored Suit for generations, and then his younger brother became King."

"Jack must have been pleased with that," Emma observed dryly.

Dodge managed something like a laugh. "When Cora showed up, he was among the first to pledge allegiance," he told her, "most Spades still alive are thralls. He's not."

"He'll be contacting his Queen now," he said as she backed them into the doors to the aviary, "we need to move."

"No, we don't!" Robyn's voice argued out of the sparrow feathered in onyx that had landed on Dodge's shoulder.

"Robyn..." he started.

"Don't you _Robyn_ me!" the sparrow continued, "I'm calling one of the healers now. You can brief your soldiers and storm the castle then, but you are going to sit down and be poked and prodded and not one complaint do you hear me?"

Emma had to hide a smile as she helped Dodge to sit down. The Lady of Diamonds reminded her of her own mother when Snow got worked up about something. The realization made a wave of homesickness wash over her, but the thought of Storybrooke reminded her.

The blonde crouched down next to Dodge. "Do you know the Hatter?" she demanded.

He nodded. "Everyone does."

"Are there any more of his hats here?" she continued, "in Wonderland?"

The general shrugged. "In the castle," he replied, "how does it help, they don't work."

Emma didn't answer that Jefferson himself had once thought that, and she had apparently accomplished the impossible. "If this works, I get one," she said.

Dodge looked at her thoughtfully. "If this works, I'll personally get you one of Jefferson's hats and tell you everything he ever told me about the thing," he swore.

She filed away the information that he'd known Jefferson well enough to for the Hatter to have talked with him, and ignored the people bursting through the foliage to take the offered hand and shake firmly.

A boy, hardly a teenager, in red robes, knelt on the other side of Dodge and waved a hand over him. The general rolled his eyes and Emma stood so as not to interfere in whatever this was.

"It's a simple paralysis spell," the boy said after a moment, "a good flush should get it out."

Robyn visibly relaxed at the news, and Emma took her by the elbow to gain her attention.

"This comes off now," she demanded, indicating the collar.

The Diamond didn't argue, simply fished out the handful of diamonds from before and pouring them into Emma's waiting palm.

The first one she jabbed up stuck, and the collar ratcheted infinitesimally looser. The Diamond nodded and went to sit in the place next to Dodge that she had recently vacated.

"What happened?" the pirate asked. He'd come in in the commotion, but remained along the sidelines.

"A disgruntled sorcerer," Emma answered.

He paused, moving into her line of sight. "We could still go," Hook suggested, "Cut our losses and leave this world to its own politics."

An hour ago, she might have agreed with him and taken her chances with finding something, but now she had a solid lead, and besides Cora deserved what was coming to her. "Fine then, go" she snapped, stabbing another diamond into the metal, "Find yourself a portal and leave."

"I'm not going to abandon you," he snarled. Emma stepped back reflexively, putting valuable distance between them, one hand dropping to touch the swan pendant. A lot of people had told her things like that, and none of them had ever kept their word. People were always ripped away, even if they didn't choose it. Hoping that he might be different? That would only put more scars on her heart. It was already only barely held together by duct tape, a prayer, and her own determination; it didn't need to be trampled on any more.

"I'm not," Hook repeated, something of Killian breaking through, and for a moment she could almost believe it.

Emma shook her head, stepping back again as the words failed over each other in her throat. She couldn't believe, it was too dangerous.

"Swan," he said. Damn pirate, he had no right to sound so broken. She wasn't leaving him in the care of a giant for ten hours or anything like that.

"Why?" No, that was not what was supposed to come out, she'd wanted to snap at him, get him back to angry. She could deal with angry. Lethally sincere was another story altogether, and the worst part was that her lie detector hadn't gone off yet.

"Won't I abandon you?" He smiled mirthlessly. "I know what it feels like Swan, and however much you seem to enjoy causing that, I do not."

She jerked back as though he'd hit her, and he realized the implication a second too late. "Swan-" he began.

"Save it," she growled, turning her back on him. She continued furiously jabbing gems into the collar, feeling it grow looser with every diamond. "Go, Hook."

"Cora's heart is not in her chest," he told her, or maybe warned, "she can't be killed without it."

The last gem stuck, but the collar didn't come off. Emma tugged at it impatiently, but the thing didn't budge. "I'll keep that in mind," she told the pirate stiffly, and stalked off.

"What's wrong?" she asked Robyn, "Why isn't it coming off?"

The Lady straightened and laid a hand on the metal. Her eyes went vacant as though she was looking somewhere far beyond, and her brow furrowed. "It's missing one," she told Emma.

The one that Jack took.

Emma had had just about enough. She wanted to go home, and she was getting sick of people getting in her way. She whirled back to Dodge. "How soon can we go?" she asked.

The general waved off the healer and heaved himself to his feet with only a modicum of wobbling. "As soon as we gather the Clubs," he answered.

"Not without me," Robyn interjected. She crossed her arms, and the trees behind her were alight with the glitter of gem-feathered birds, each of which was a key.

Almost reflexively, Emma glanced over her shoulder, looking for Hook. The pirate shrugged.

"I may as well," he sighed.

Things fell into place very quickly after that. The resistance was made up mostly of Clubs, who, Emma learned, served as Wonderland's milita under normal circumstances, along with a handful of Diamonds. They had a few Hearts, in the form of their healers, but all of them had been strictly disciplined and drilled for something like this.

They assembled in a large hall, the entire back wall reflecting their faces back at them. Emma turned her back on it, and scanned the room.

"If you had all these people , why didn't you do something before now?" she asked Robyn, who was next to her doing final checks on her keys.

"You're going to be powerful when that collar comes off," Robyn admitted, "and we've never had that before."

"Jack and Cora have always been the greatest threats," Dodge added in, "even if he never had quite the same fluency with magic as his brother did, Jack is still the Lord of Spades for a reason, and Cora is Queen by her ruthlessness. We've been planning to move since Cora left, your arrival coincided nicely."

"One request," Emma said.

"What?"

She flexed her wrists and clenched her fists, already twitching to hit the Spade. "Leave Jack to me."

"Done," the general replied.

He signaled to Robyn, who slapped the gem in her hands onto the mirror. It reverberated through the looking glass, sending a ripple through, and the first group moved seamlessly through their own reflections.

Robyn held Dodge back at the gate, yanked him close and kissed him somewhat desperately. "Fight well," she murmured when she released him. Dodge nodded and stepped through the mirror, followed closely by the second group.

"What do you say Swan?" Hook asked, "Kiss for luck?"

Emma would be lying if she said she wasn't tempted. Instead, she readjusted her grip on the short sword she'd been given and looked at him, pretending to consider it, and then just couldn't resist. "I'd rather kiss a Wookie."

Hook's brow furrowed, but his confounded question was swallowed up in the shimmer as she stepped through the mirror into a war zone.

Cora's forces had definitely known they were coming. Their slightly rag-tag group was battling furiously in the open courtyard where the mirror had dumped them out, confronted by soldiers in pristine red, backed by dazed casters in black with hands glowing blue.

"Try not to kill them," Emma said over her shoulder as the mirror they'd come through ejected Hook.

He twirled the blade in his hand, "I won't promise anything," and locked swords with a conveniently nearby soldier. She didn't stick around to watch the rest, engaging another red-clad soldier who seemed determined to part her head with her body.

Someone screamed "Get down!" just before magic started blasting at them picking off Cora's soldiers almost as often as the resistance. A glance up found Jack standing on a balcony, something glowing between his hands

As soon as he ran out of power in whatever spell he was working, Emma was on her feet and working her way toward the side wall. A set of stairs, nearly hidden by a curtain, led upward, so up she raced, trying not to think about what was happening below.

She emerged into a hall nearly identical to the one where the battle was, raised a step. Jack was still standing at the balcony, weaving his hands through the air. Blue streamers followed where his fingers went, and he tied them together in a Gordian knot that simmered with lethal intent.

"So glad you could join me," he said.

Element of surprise lost, Emma charged at him with her blade raised, intending to get in at least one good hit before he could. She got within a few steps before she hit something that sent her flying in one direction, her sword in the other.

"This is what they send against me?" the Spade asked, "a poor broken girl who cannot even control her own magic."

But Emma wasn't listening. He'd shed his coat, draped across the rail, and she'd landed just next to it. She plunged a hand into a pocket and closed her fingers around the gem he'd stolen, then jammed it into the collar still around her neck. There was a single simple click and the metal clattered to the floor.

The magic hit her like a fist to the gut. It surged up under her skin, filling her with a luminosity that threatened to drag her under, similar to the first time it had threatened to pull her down. She couldn't see, couldn't breathe.

But there was no time to drown.

Emma rolled over and blindly flung out a hand in Jack's direction. She'd wanted fire. What came out was a great flash-bang of light that rocked the room.

The Spade did something that detonated next to her, sending shards of stone flying. Emma rolled sideways as he threw another, and tried to pull the magic over herself in some sort of shield.

When the dust had settled, he had turned away from her, weaving a mass of glowing blue streams together in the air in front of him, watching the hall below as he did. First mistake: thinking Emma Swan was going to stay down. She'd been picking herself back up when people knocked her down for her entire life, this was no different.

Jack tugged a snarl out of whatever he was doing and turned around as she pushed herself up. "You are persistent," he said, "I'll give you that. Give up now and I'll even let you live."

She had had quite enough of running. She yanked at the magic, forced it to listen to her, left her fancy castings behind and tackled him bodily through the mirror he was standing beside.

The world turned over, went bright and glittering and faceted. Flashes of places went by, glimpses through silver-tinted frames, as they tumbled through this glittering sharp place. They fell out into someone's living room somewhere, and Jack kicked her off him, turned, and bounded into the mirror across the room.

Emma leapt after him, chasing his coattails through the shining planes.

He snagged a frame and shoved sideways just before leaving a mirror, vanishing through a different one, and she spun out into a marketplace through the original. She caught sight of him a few shops over and raced after him, pushing past people scrambling to get out of the way with their purchases.

Jack glanced back and grinned when he saw her. He pulled one of the buttons off his coat and threw it behind him, and in midair, it roared into a large blue tiger, streaks of silver dappling its flanks. She yanked something that felt sturdy out of a nearby vendor and swung it like she was batting. When they made contact, her stick flared white in the magic that was bubbling over, and the tiger went flying. It shimmered in blue lights where it had fallen, and then disintegrated.

She found the Spade still watching her, but his face had fallen as the easy triumph he'd assumed was his failed him. He turned and ran, and Emma pursued.

It was a little like tag, in a strange, murderous kind of way. Jack scatted spells blindly behind him as they ran through rooms, houses, across streets and into reflecting windows, doing his best to lose or incapacitate her, and Emma threw whatever she had at him whenever she could see him. They dotted fireballs and explosions almost indiscriminately, he stopped for a moment to fill a room with smoke, she managed to produce what felt a lot like a firework, he cast a handful of spikes at her, she somehow managed to rip the roof off a well and just about dropped it on his head. Her aim was slightly off and he escaped into a nearby mirror.

Hook's voice came back to her, whispering in her ear over the clamor of the magic. _There are people who can shape this land into whatever form they like. _If they could do it, so could she. Emma shut her eyes, grabbed ahold of the mirror she'd just followed him into, and told it to loop over on itself.

Had her magic been any less simmering, Wonderland wouldn't have listened, but as it was the realm fought her for a moment, then relented.

The Lord of Spades came barreling straight back into her. Emma was ready for it, he was not. The look on his face was actually comical as she punched him.

The force of the impact sent them spinning in opposite directions, and he was sucked out through another mirror. She whirled head-over heels once before got her feet under her again and shoved off to go through the same one.

Somewhere someone was laughing, because they were exactly back where they'd started. Jack had already collected himself to his feet when she stumbled out, and he jerked a hand up, the blue weavings he'd started before clenched in his fist. She froze mid-motion, caught in an impossible pose as a feeling like ice snatched at her, leaving only her head her own to move.

"I'll admit," said the Spade, and she was gratified to see that at least he was panting, "you gave me quite a run. I didn't expect you to be that good, but alas, all things must end and this little revolution is no exception."

Hook, who'd been creeping up behind, whopped him over the head with something heavy and metal, from the way it rang and the way Jack just crumbled like his strings had been cut. "Rather puny sorcerer," he commented.

She stumbled as the enchantment that had been holding her in place winked out, dropping her hands to her knees as she tried to catch her breath.

"What took you so long?" she gasped out, reaching down for the collar. The diamonds ran out in a steady stream to clink against the stone, and she carefully stepped over the pile, leaned down, and locked it around Jack's neck.

"Not all of us can run through mirrors like that," the pirate pointed out, "I thought my timing was exceptional."

Emma jerked to a stop as a compulsion seized her, something Wonderland wanted desperately. She shut her eyes and turned away, following the tug of it down hallways, turning and winding at its urging. It was using her, the fact that she wasn't completely in control of her own magic, to get her to do _something,_ but it seemed so reasonable that she saw no reason to decline.

She went up several flights of stairs, back down the same set farther than there had been when she started, and up again. By logic, she should have ended up in the same place she started, but instead she was in a part of the palace she'd never seen before, where torches smoked against dull walls and there were cell bars on either side.

The tugging led her down the block, to where a single frame was curled up in the corner of the farthest cell.

The woman sitting in the cell was frail, wispy and frail, but the trail of Wonderland's magic changed around her. Emma pushed on the cell door and in a surge of magic it came completely free from its hinges to clatter against the ground.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The woman looked up, startled as a field mouse. She must have been pretty once, before captivity had rendered her dirty and pale, her once-blonde hair hanging int strings.

"My name is Alyss," she answered, and captivity may have robbed her of, "of Hearts."

She could see a beat thundering in Alyss's chest, magic pulsing there that shouldn't be, dark foreign magic that rang in a different tone from Wonderland's.

"I'm Emma," she soothed, "it's alright now. Cora's gone. You're safe now, Dodge and Robyn have been looking for you."

Alyss huddled further into herself. "Cora will never be gone," she whimpered.

Something wasn't adding up here.

_Things we do not wish harmed are best kept in those things that __are_ not. Something the Cat had said to her.

Cora's heart, according to Hook, was not in her chest.

The place where on Alyss, if this was indeed Alyss, where her heart should be throbbed in rhythm with something dark that didn't belong.

An idea sparked in the far reaches of her mind, and she reached forward before she could think better of it. She'd never done this before, but the principle seemed easy enough. Reach in, grab heart.

She extricated it as gently as she could, given the scenario, and it came back pulsing so darkly red it was nearly black.

With the heart in her hand she could see everything that was happening on the other side. Cora raised a hand glowing with magic, Regina standing opposite her with green lightning sparking at her fingertips, Henry tucked behind her like a mother lion protecting her cub. Her parents were there, her father trying to shield her mother.

Cora was going to kill them.

She hesitated, old memories freezing her fingers, but then Cora's heart pulsed triumph in her palm. Emma shut her eyes, unable to look at what she was doing, and closed her fingers.

The heart fought back, years of protective spells interwoven with the muscle, Wonderland's magic sewn in with every breath Alyss took, all resisting her, but Emma was adamant. The red queen would not harm her family.

The magic surging through her beat at the heart, wearing it down, until it gave in abruptly. Her fingers snapped shut in a bear trap through it, meeting again at her palm with nothing but dust between them.

Suddenly, it was all too much, the magic she'd been fighting rose up to wash over her head in a wave of brightness, sinking her down into the ocean of it.

Twin pools of blue were the last thing she could make out before the darkness claimed her.


End file.
